The Municipal Institute of Information Technology (IMI) presented and shared its project for decommissioning applications, in the context of the strategic goals set out in Barcelona City Council’s Digital Transformation Plan. The project makes for a more sustainable administration, with easy access to data through more agile information systems and simpler processes, with the initiative leading to an annual saving of €1 million and a reduction in the carbon footprint.
For over 30 years, the City Council has accumulated numerous applications and information systems for managing databases on different platforms. These applications and platforms continued to exist owing to the need to be able to access their data. The goal is to eliminate these applications and some of the platforms they are built on, to rationalise and modernise technology while preserving and providing access to the data they hold.
The solution should allow access to the data, enabling it to be viewed and treated in reports or processes. Policies on security and the preservation and retention of the data held must also be applied, complying with corporate policies on information governance.
For the IMI, a project to select and implement a global system for archiving structured and unstructured data, searching historical information and offering a standard means of deleting obsolete historification posed a major challenge.
Following a draft project stage to define the requirements, scope and cost of the project, as well as a study of the market and the various technological solutions, the decision was to opt for the Opentext Infoarchive tool. In the end, this tool made it possible to decommission 31 applications with full security guarantees, providing a viewing interface and consultation services for the archived data which resolves future City Council needs in terms of access to information.