A UNIFIED DIGITAL STRATEGY FOR AN EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE
INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNICATION
INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Technology is a determining factor in the organization and conditions of life in society. It is therefore essential that public bodies are not left behind.
New management of contents and portals
The Generalitat of Catalonia, the institutional system in which the autonomous community of Catalonia is politically organized, had one objective: to transform the current set of solutions that build the Government´s portal into a platform that would allow them to manage virtual communication with citizens through the different dissemination channels in a unified way. To do this they needed:
- Have a simpler and more user-friendly platform that facilitates not only the entry of content by their editorial team (currently around 1000 people), but also make the time spent by these resources more effective.
- Reduce the cost of licenses, both product it seeks to replace, Vigenette / Opentext, and the infrastructure that supports it.
- Have the possibility of exploiting this information through the rest of the channels through an API platform based on JSON standards.
Unified digital strategy: Synonymous with efficiency
- To provide a solution to these needs, the first thing we had to do was to migrate the then current Portals and Content Management solution, based on OpenText Vignette VCM and VAP v7 products, to a new solution called Webs gencat, based on the Open Source OpenCms v8.5 product. A transversal tool that allows the management and publication of content on the different websites of all the departments of the Government: 1,000,000 pages served per day, 1,000,000 content, 140 portals and 1,500 contributing users.
- In addition, for this project we developed a unified digital strategy to ensure that citizens, companies, and the tertiary sector correctly received all relevant coherent communications and services. A strategy built on three clear pillars: Simplicity, Cloud Technologies, and Open Source that also allow us to reduce infrastructure costs, software licenses and human resources.
An easier, more useful, simple, and economical solution.
A development that has led to benefits been observed in:
- The economic area, where the administration’s budget cuts at the time of the project forced us to find an imaginative solution that has allowed us to reduce the cost associated with the maintenance and operation of the current platform thanks to the reduction in infrastructure costs, and software licenses, technical support, and the human team necessary for its maintenance and the necessary training of users.
- The technological area where we have been able to develop a flexible, easy-to-use, simple, and scalable unified multichannel broadcasting platform. A project that, thanks to its success, has made us a benchmark in high-performance Open Source platforms, as there is no other project of this magnitude on OpenCms technology at European level and according to the manufacturer Open Cms does not know of any other with this scope worldwide.
An Open Source solution capable of serving more than 1,000,000 pages per day, 1,000,000 content, 140 portals and 1,500 users.
Technological details
Open CMS is content management software that helps administrators to create and maintain their websites quickly and efficiently through a fully browser-based user interface and fully customizable editors capable of creating structured content using HTML5 automatically. A manager developed through Java and XML that, in addition, allows the incorporation of widgets and, of course, as open source software, has no license costs.