Getronics Editorial Team
In this article:
The deployment of an electronic signature validation system, @firma, in addition to that offered by the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function, allows RedIRIS to offer a more stable and efficient service to its 500 associated institutions.
A New Requirement
RedIRIS is the Spanish academic and research network providing advanced communication services to the national scientific and university community. It is managed directly by the Public Business Entity Red.es and funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities.
With over 500 affiliated institutions (mostly universities and research centres), RedIRIS, through its collaboration with Crue Digitalisation, identified the need to complement the @firma service provided by the General Secretariat of Digital Administration (SGAD) of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function with a federated @firma service. This would ensure that all institutions affiliated with RedIRIS have additional access to the @firma service, which is critical for the various e-administration processes that these institutions must constantly carry out.
RedIRIS needed to implement a technical infrastructure and services to meet the technological, operational, continuity, and demand needs of this service for potential users. Additionally, it required specialised support services to administer, maintain, operate, and manage the @firma electronic signature validation platform and address queries and incidents related to that platform.
A Scalable Solution
Getronics proposed the implementation of a scalable infrastructure solution with a cluster for managing the @firma platform. This platform included high-level security and traffic control components to handle the volume of required requests. Furthermore, a Business Intelligence (BI) solution was proposed for data exploitation, allowing proactive decision-making processes and enabling the service to adapt to fluctuations in demand.
This platform also met the following key objectives for the project’s success:
- Integrate all information into a single analytical platform for generating customised and on-demand reports.
- Create a web-based dashboard generation system to enable service management to analyse service metrics and extract useful information.
- Ensure the platform was “self-service” so that decision-makers could generate their own reports in real-time and on-demand, without relying on IT teams.
- Facilitate advanced analytics to shift from reaction to anticipation, thanks to the application of Machine Learning, thus obtaining predictive models that allow managing infrastructure capacity based on available historical information.
- Include indicator categories such as data quality and business, such as the degree of service usage/penetration.
Of course, the project was not without challenges. Coordination between different work teams was crucial to implementing the platform, including the provision of infrastructure, technical support, application development, and data analytics. Additionally, integration with the client’s systems and connections with their security and traffic systems was one of the biggest challenges for the Getronics teams.
The Achieved Benefits
The new electronic signature platform adds value to users compared to solely relying on the SGAD service, with which this additional deployment has been coordinated.
They now have a maintenance service for platform management, incident, and problem management.
Moreover, the maintenance plan is proactive through the analysis of patches, updates of new versions, capacity planning, and anticipation of problem detection.
They have support services for the integration of affiliated systems with the @firma platform, including service requests and technical/functional advice.
The Business Intelligence platform allows analysing platform information, with a view to improving system understanding and thus anticipating future problems.
This successful collaboration between RedIRIS and Getronics resulted in the establishment of a robust electronic signature validation platform tailored to the needs of RedIRIS-affiliated institutions, ensuring higher quality, reliability, and efficiency of the service.
“This project has been a complete success due to our experience in implementing similar solutions for other clients. Currently, Getronics provides operation, administration, and support services for the second largest implementation of @firma after SGAD, and the first federated platform in terms of service provision volume. This makes us well-acquainted with the solution and able to offer the best option to each administration or company”
Federico Real, Service Delivery Manager at Getronics
