UGPP PROVIDES MORE AGILE SERVICES TO CITIZENS WITH SUPPORT FROM GOOGLE CLOUD
The entity migrated its applications and services to the cloud to streamline its internal data loading and analysis processes, and provide a better information request experience to citizens.
GOOGLE CLOUD RESULTS
- Acceleration of data loading from 72 hours to minutes
- Reduction of infrastructure costs
- Automation of internal processes and citizen procedures
- Improvement in the productivity of UGPP public servants
- 99.7% SLA of information availability
The Pension and Parafiscal Management Unit (UGPP), created in 2010 and dependent on the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia, is in charge of 2 missionary businesses: recognizing the pension rights of public entities that have been liquidated and creating a culture of correct and timely payment of contributions to the social protection system in Colombia.
The entity has more than 850 public servants employed who carry out their activities based on a robust technological platform, processes and basic principles of information technology management.
In a context of permanent technological transformation, the institution continually develops exercises to update the business architecture to articulate the business and IT areas, and strengthen the operation of the UGPP.
TOWARDS BETTER OPERATIONS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
To improve the provision of its services to citizens and facilitate their access to information, the UGPP faced the challenge of digitizing procedures and automating its processes. A challenge that involved not only improving the coordination between its areas, but also the management of projects that developed the capabilities of using technology by the internal team.
To do this, they adopted emerging technologies, such as data analysis, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, with a solid measurement methodology to make the most of the information already housed in their data lake through better data monitoring and analysis.
In search of optimized management, key to having more timely and reliable information, the UGPP needed to increase its data analysis capacity and guarantee an agile and efficient supply and exchange of data without ever neglecting its digital security.
"We wanted to be an information government and, to achieve this, it was essential to consider data not only as a public good but also as an enabler of strategic results. The first step to achieve this was to integrate tools that allow the use of new technological models ."—Ana María Cadena Ruiz, General Director, UGPP
A CLOUD THAT IMPROVES AVAILABILITY AND ACCESS TO DATA
The migration of UGPP applications and services to Google Cloud to address these challenges, a process that took approximately a year, allowed them to access solutions that were key to making more efficient use of computing resources.
After the initial implementation of Google Workspace email, meetings and chat services, to improve communication and collaboration between UGPP officials, the entity opted for Google Analytics, to meet the new data management and analysis requirements. .
On the other hand, to make the main project of migrating their data sources, whose loading was done on-premises until then, to a cloud environment, a reality, they adopted Google Cloud's BigQuery and Dataflow solutions.
Both tools, complemented with other solutions such as Artifact Registry and Container Registry, provided the institution with the data ingestion, extraction and presentation processes they needed to rationalize and consolidate access to these sources both within the UGPP and towards citizens.
Finally, the UGPP implemented Google Kubernetes Engine, to develop legacy applications in containers and optimize the infrastructure management process, and the CloudBuild CI/CD platform, to streamline the lifecycle from code upload to CloudSource Repositories to the implementation of applications in different environments.
"The implementation of Google Cloud solutions was very beneficial for the UGPP thanks to the low costs of implementation services, easy access to technical documentation and the knowledge base, which greatly facilitated the process."—Cristobalina Garzón Lozada, Technology Services Assurance Coordinator, UGPP
A MORE EFFICIENT ENVIRONMENT FOR EMPLOYEES AND CITIZENS
The adoption of Google Cloud had great advantages for the UGPP, and one of the main ones has undoubtedly been the streamlining of the entity's information processes.
In this sense, loading data and files into sources, which previously could take up to 72 hours, today, thanks to the cloud, are resolved in minutes. Furthermore, by eliminating the need for an on-premises infrastructure, the UGPP is able to scale according to user demand, which greatly reduces its costs and optimizes response times.
Management has also had a positive impact, because tasks that were previously performed manually, such as information monitoring or version deployment, have been automated without affecting the production environment.
Based on these internal optimizations in terms of processes and management, the UGPP has improved the productivity of its servers, which use these tools comprehensively, optimizing times and processing information efficiently with more stable implementations.
The benefits have also been very important for citizens, who previously had to make a right to petition the entity to obtain data on their parafiscal contributions and wait days to receive them.
Today, they have a completely new tool that allows them to apply digitally, directly obtain the relevant information they need in a matter of minutes and know exactly what UGPP-related processes their application involves. Thus, they avoid the intermediation of third parties in this process and reduce processing times.
"Today, thanks to Google Cloud, we are in a better position to generate and deliver the consolidated, normalized and unified information that citizens need. And we do it from a state-of-the-art platform, with agile processing and great service availability." —Adriana Samaca Talero, Director of Information Technology Management, UGPP
The UGPP's information security has also had improvements thanks to Google Cloud, which has covered its availability and security requirements with an SLA of 99.7%.
Additionally, the cloud helps mitigate the costs associated with your traditional data loss protection (DLP) system, with a fully managed service designed to make it easier to identify, classify and protect your most sensitive information.
SUPPORT THAT DRIVES YOU TO MOVE FORWARD
During the cloud migration process, the UGPP received continuous support in training its engineers and sizing the architecture from the Google Cloud team.
Today, the UGPP plans to continue working along the same lines, extending the use of cloud tools to other internal teams and adopting artificial intelligence technologies, Vertex AI, to take its platform to new levels.
The objective: to grow continuously to provide the increasingly agile and efficient services that citizens expect.
