The infrastructure, changing from the inside

When a resident starts a procedure, looks up a municipal map or books an appointment, what answers is a layer nobody sees: the servers the platform runs on, the databases where the data lives and the access each team comes in through. That layer can’t stop, and at the same time it has to change: the engines move up a version, the pieces get replaced and the environments multiply with every council that arrives.

The platform is Mejora tu Ciudad, by Radmas Technologies, S.L., and we work on its development side by side with their team, here on the infrastructure that holds it up: the environments, the continuity, the monitoring and the access.

We built the environments piece by piece. We put in place the infrastructure the platform runs on —its services and its environments— and we have held it up with their team ever since, more than five years later.

The backup runs on its own and is held elsewhere. We automated the daily backup of the databases, the maps and the generated reports, and we keep it off the servers that produce it.

The monitoring opens the task on its own. We set up the system that detects when a service drifts and opens the follow-up task by itself: the alert and the work that handles it are born together.

The credentials live in an encrypted vault. It keeps a record of who changes what and when, across every environment of the platform. On the municipal systems we implemented single sign-on —one identity to get into all of them— and we tuned against real traffic the application firewall that protects the platform.

Every migration goes in with the service running. We replaced the internal messaging system that connects the platform’s processes, whole. We moved the databases up a version, across every environment. We took the platform’s search engine to a new version. And we modernised the platform from the inside, with the data and the connections migrating while it ran: months of work without the service stopping.

What repeats runs on its own. The maps and the geographic areas update without intervention, the move between test and production environments is automated and the dependency review goes into every cycle.

Integration has a door of its own. We opened a portal where other teams and third parties integrate with the platform.

The platform changed databases, messaging and search engine, and the city carried on reporting. The backup goes out every day, off the servers that produce it, the monitoring opens its own task and access to the municipal systems goes through a single identity.