The next BriefingsDirect digital transformation success story examines how local governments in
Norway benefit from a common platform approach for safe and efficient public
data distribution.
We’ll now learn how Norway’s 18 counties are gaining a common shared pool for data on young people’s health and other sensitive information thanks to streamlined benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), containers, and microservices.
We’ll now learn how Norway’s 18 counties are gaining a common shared pool for data on young people’s health and other sensitive information thanks to streamlined benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), containers, and microservices.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Here to help us discover
the benefits of a modern platform for smarter government data sharing is Frode Sjovatsen, Head of Development for FINT Project in Norway. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: What is driving interest in having a common
platform for public information in your country?
Sjovatsen: We need interactions between the government and the community to be more
efficient. So we needed to build the infrastructure
that supports automatic solutions for citizens. That’s the main driver.
Gardner: What problems do you need to overcome in order to
create a more common approach?
Common API at the core
Sjovatsen: One of the biggest issues is [our
users] buy business applications such as human resources for school administrators
to use and everyone is happy. They have a nice user interface on the data. But
when we need to use that data across all the other processes -- that’s where
the problem is. And that’s what the FINT project is all about.
 |
| Sjovatsen |
[Due to apps
heterogeneity] we then need to have developers create application programminginterfaces (APIs), and it costs a lot of money, and it is of variable quality. What
we’re doing now is creating a common API that’s horizontal -- for all of those
business applications. It gives us the ability to use our data much more
efficiently.
Gardner: Please describe for us what the FINT project is and
why this is so important for public health.
Sjovatsen: It’s all about taking the power back, regarding the information we’ve handed
the vendors. There is an initiative in Norway where the government talks about
getting control of all the information. And the thought behind the FINT project
is that we need to get ahold of all the information, describe it, define it,
and then make it available via APIs -- both for public use and also for internal
use.
Gardner: What sort of information are we dealing with here?
Why is it important for the general public health?
Sjovatsen: It’s all kinds of information. For
example, it’s school information, such as about how the everyday processes run,
the schedules, the grades, and so on. All of that data is necessary to create
good services, for the teachers and students. We also want to make that data available
so that we can build new innovations from businesses that want to create new
and better solutions for us.
Agility, scalability, and speed
Sjovatsen: We needed something that was agile so that we can roll out updates
continuously. We also needed a way to roll back quickly, if something fails.
The reason we are running
this on one of the county council’s datacenters is we wanted to separate it
from their other production environments. We need to be able to scale these
services quickly. When we talked to Hewlett Packard
Enterprise (HPE), the solution they suggested was using HCI.
Gardner: Where are you in the deployment and what have
been some of the benefits of such a hyperconverged approach?
Sjovatsen: We are in the late stage of testing and we’re going into production in early
2018. At the moment, we’re looking into using HPE SimpliVity.
Container comfort
Gardner: Containers are an important part
of moving toward automation and simplicity for many people these days. Is that
another technology that you are comfortable with and, if so, why?
Sjovatsen: Yes, definitely. We are very comfortable with that. The biggest reason
is that when we use containers, we isolate the application; the whole container
is the application and we are able to test the code before it goes into
production. That’s one of the main drivers.
The second reason is
that it’s easy to roll out and it’s easy to roll back. We also have developers
in and out of the project, and containers make it easy for them to quickly get
in to the environment they are working on. It’s not that much work if they need
to install on another computer to get a working environment running.
Gardner: A lot of IT organizations are trying to reduce the amount
of money and time they spend on maintaining existing applications, so they can put
more emphasis into creating new applications. How do containers, microservices, and
API-driven services help you flip from an emphasis on maintenance to an
emphasis on innovation?
Gardner: With the success of the FINT Project, would you consider
extending this to other types of data and applications in other public sector activities or processes? If your success here continues,
is this a model that you think has extensibility into other public
sector applications?
Unlocking the potential
Sjovatsen: Yes, definitely. At the moment, there
are 18 county councils in this project. We are just beginning to introduce this
to all of the 400 municipalities [in Norway]. So that’s the next step. Those are the same
data sets that we want to share or extend. But there are also initiatives with
central registers in Norway and we will add value to those using our approach
in the next year or so.
Gardner:
That could have some very beneficial
impacts, very good payoffs.
Sjovatsen: Yes, it could. There are other uses. For example, in Oslo we have made an
API extend over the locks on many doors. So, we can now have one API to open
multiple locking systems. So that’s another way to use this approach.
In Oslo we have made an API extend over the locks on many doors. We can now have one API to open multiple locking systems.
Sjovatsen: I definitely recommend it -- it’s
simple and agile. The main thing with containers is to separate the storage from
the applications. That’s probably what we worked on the most to make it
scalable. We wrote the application so it’s scalable, and we separated the data
from the presentation layer.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
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