Department of Environment Heritage & Local Government

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is the Department primarily responsible for the formulation and implementation of housing policy and for the preparation of legislation in relation to housing.

Scenario: The Department is responsible for the collation and analysis of data obtained from the lending institutions regarding house prices. This information is one of the key inputs into housing policy formulation. Following the Study of House Price Statistics carried out by DKM Economic Consultants it was concluded that the existing data collated and held by the department was too limited in terms of conducting analysis.

Challenge:The Department put the proposed new House Price Statistics System out to tender - a new system was needed to more accurately produce a quarterly house price index and the Housing Statistics Bulletins. In early 2003 FDS won the tender to supply the new House Price Statistics System.

Solution: FD Systems designed and developed the new system in its entirety using Visual Basic, Java, SQL Server and SPSS. The system comprises of electronically capturing each mortgage transaction from mortgage providers on a monthly basis, the production of a mix-adjusted house price index and any sub-indices required, the generation of tables required for the Housing Statistics Bulletins, the facility to run ad hoc queries and complex statistical analysis to assist in policy issues and controlling all aspects of the database management including access, security, anonymising the data and ensuring confidentiality.