Wednesday at 10:30 I will participate in the panel discussion on cloud computing at the 5th edition of eShow Barcelona.

Here we will discuss different practical experiences in the use of cloud computing, and specifically on the case of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The competitive bidding process for defining the new model for the IT infrastructure of the Government is finalized, and the winners are announced. The official press release is available from the Generalitat de Catalonia (Catalan version only):

The objective of the process was to acquire a complete infrastructure for the computing services of the government, including application servers, databases, disk space, etc.

The Catalan Government is the largest consumer of computing systems in the region, and owns the largest data center infrastructure in Catalonia, currently composed of more than 4,000 servers that run more than 1,800 programs of all kinds.

The final solution led to the division of the services into two groups;

• External CPD, that contains systems that can be executed on different types of cloud computing services. These systems are non-critical and can be hosted even on third-party servers.
• Core CPD services that will be hosted in government premises for security reasons.

Before the completion of this project, infrastructure was spread in over 40 datacenters, located all over Catalonia mainly in office buildings. We have managed to concentrate the service in only 6 datacenters, each of them hosting specific equipment to suite the applications that will be hosted and allowing different security levels (TIER 3 or more). This improves significantly the system reliability.
The first block (External CPD) is divided into 4 parts, to avoid the risks of concentrating all systems in a single point. The following companies have won contracts for External CPD:

As a result, 3 new international cloud computing nodes will be installed in Catalonia, and Government will occupy only 25% of their capacity, leaving the rest for local companies or for the international market. Carles Flamerich, director of Telecommunications and Information Society of Catalonia, stated that this will put Catalonia in one of the leading positions in cloud computing in Southern Europe.

The constracts with suppliers are awarded for periods from 6 to 10 years with a total budget of 397M€, leading to the maximum annual cost of 45M€. In comparison with the costs in 2010, this is a 35% reduction.

As a conclusion, the goals of the project are completely fulfilled:

• Reduction of cost (by 35%)
• Consolidation and modernization of the infrastructure (migration to cloud computing)
• Industrial development of the region, creating new jobs and new infrastructures.

Continuing the process for awarding competitive 4 dialogues that make the new model of Government ICT, yesterday he had the turn of the dialogue of telecommunications.

The competition had a maximum of € 634 million, and includes in it in most types of telecommunications used by the Government. The award periods are variable, highlighting the 10-year contract for connectivity, that wich should connect with FO most of Government sites.

In this award should be noted the reduction achieved in services such as mobile or fixed, but the main contribution is that the Director General of Telecommunications and Information Society, Carles Flamerich has described as the country network.

The new connectivity contract includes, in addition to the provision of services with FO for the Government, the advent of fiber optic services to 80% of the municipalities of Catalonia.

This will allow that in these municipalities all carrier interested in providing services may use the network of the contractor (in this case, Telefonica) at a regulated price in order to provide telecommunications services to its customers.

Thus, if an operator is interested in providing fiber optic services to its customers in a municipality, may use the backbone of Telefonica to connect the client to the Internet, or their backbone.

The estimation of fiber optic network will be extended through this project will be more than 80,000 kilometers, which will generate jobs in Catalonia, very good news at this time of crisis in the sector.

This is a week of launch of new portals at the Government. After the publication of new websites and the President of the Government, now inaugurated a new website that will certainly be debated. This is the portal against urban violence, a site that aims to open the way for collaboration between the Catalan police and the population in order to facilitate the identification of persons involved in acts of vandalism at the street.

This site published photos and videos of people who have participated in riots, and through a form that invites people in a completely safe way to help identify people involved in this type of action.

I think it is a good initiative. We agree or not with the actions of a government, but never this kind of behavior are justifiable. And that people who are against these ways of acting can collaborate with the police to put a stop to these situations, I think is positive. Sum.

In any case, an innovative initiative. I work for the people of Operations and Security, to protect this site. For, the same as governments do not attack the sites that people want have their say, is not acceptable attempting to attack the channels of communication from the Government. Because this is not democratic.

Today came into operation a new Web portal Govern.cat , whose function as a communication tool of government action.
 

 
Thus, the communication separates the general public, it will be through the main Generalitat portal gencat.cat , from the communication of the politic action.

I think this is a very good initiative because it separating two visions, is the way that messages can be made explicit. A citizen who wishes to receive a service should not receive slogans or positionings. Wish to receive a service. And who wants to get to know what you think or what lines the government works, has to find a clear way.

Hopefully it would be a role model for other authorities.

Seeing this video brings many emotions.

l’equip petit from el cangrejo on Vimeo.

Anybody can interpret it in his own way.

• We need to fight our limitations, and our rivals help us to make ourselfs better. In the entire video you don´t see an aggressive attitide towards the rivals.
• To understand our weaknesses and to accept the results without frustration is the way to overcome them.
• The satisfaction is a personal thing, and can´t be judged by others. Some people laugh at the fact that the team took 217 goals and scored only 1. However, their joy for their one goal scored is exultant.

Unfortunately, thinking like this is not common, and we see many counterexamples each day.

On March 17, we have presented to the annual event CUORE (Oracle Circle Members), the meeting of the association of the main customers of this technology, our eGovernment project.

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I attach the presentation made​​.

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Today I received my receipt at home road tax. One of 108,000 who’ve sent this past week.

What is special about this bill? Well, as thousands of people who have changed address Badalona in recent months, the bill has come to my new home, not the former.

When people change their home, the more they change their normal population census data, to obtain documents to enable them to change their primary care center, or have their ID cards with address correct.

Very few people make these changes also the home of your receipts. The result is that, until now, the bills are still sent to the address above, generating large number of fails simply because the bill did not reach the person.

With the introduction of the new SAP system of tax management, we made ​​an alignment of the data of individuals in the two systems (census and taxes), making it easier for citizens to manage your taxes.

It is a breakthrough, providing citizens not having to go repeatedly to the City Council to change the data. An improvement in the line to make it easier relationship with the municipal administration.

The Badalona City Council has launched an opendata initiative that in its release incorporates data on the functioning of public services (including police), administrative division, city equipments, official bulletin board and agenda of the city.

Report at channel 3cat24 of TV3

This initiative complements his OpenGov site (Gobern Open), which additionally provided data on the municipal budget, urban planning, or the election results.

Thus, the citizens, based on their knowledge of IT, can access the information through the portal OpenGov or download data via the portal OpenData.

The initiative is being valued by OpenData major observatories in Spain, and the project has been in the catalogs of available services provides the Ministry of Public Administrations, and the OpenData map of CTIC Foundation.

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Fundación CTIC (Center of Information and Communication Technology) has joined the initiative in its OpenData map (18 councils worldwide, 4 of them in Spain).

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In the same way, the Ministry of Public Administrations has joined the Council in its catalog of initiatives, into his Proyecto Aporta website:

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For more information about the Badalona OpenData project, visit:

• OpenData portal at City Council website
• Project description, where we talk about the project, his goals amb where you can see the details of any service

The new website of the Municipal Badalona is having a very good acceptance among the citizens in this first month of operation.

On Tuesday we take stock of this first month at Radio City Badalona, please find attached the podcast (5 minutes).

The first month of Badalona City Council new website at Radio Ciutat de Badalona

Tripled the audience of a website, when we speak of thousands of hits a day, not an easy task. I think we should be very proud of the results. More than 64,000 visitors (45,000 unique visitors) and 225,000 pages served the first month, compared to 20,000 visits in the same period last year.

We can say that this growth is not a specific situation, associated with the effect the first day of curiosity or because of an advertising campaign, but that was consolidating. One month after the launch we are holding this level, and already getting 30% of visits concurrent, percentage growth, indicating that we were the level of acceptance among the citizens of this new tool. You can download the report from the visits to press release published by the Council.

Now, once people got to know this new channel, it is now time to promote it not only as a communication tool but also as a form of interaction between citizens and administration. The goal now is to evolve towards e-government, to give better service.

In this, citizens are already a catalog of 220 fully documented procedures and forms on the Internet (7,000 page views of steps in the first month), of which 25 can be as fully on-line, always with a digital certificate .

This is the course we have now overcome, the implementation of the digital certificate. We are already working on it some time, as explained in another post about how we are doing bringing e-government to citizens. This is the challenge of the future.