Case

Dutch Police chooses agility in social issues through close cooperation on container platform

The online services of the Dutch Police are essential when it comes to maintaining contact with citizens. After all, the better the online service, the more efficiently the police force can fulfil its social role. The basis for this are the websites politie.nl, kombijdepolitie.nl and other web applications. With these applications, citizens can, for example, report or help in solving crimes and in finding missing persons. These are constantly being developed by the Dutch Police teams, but a new IT infrastructure was first required in order to increase their agility.

Ambition

  • Ability to respond more quickly to urgent social developments
  • Agile development and release process
  • A stable, secure, flexible and manageable IT infrastructure
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Solutions

  • State of the art private cloud
  • Integrated Delivery software release model, including:
    • An innovative and efficient multi-tenant container platform
    • Shared CI/CD pipeline with automated testing process
    • Content Delivery Network
    • Stretched DevSecOps collaboration
  • Extra managed security services, like DDoS mitigation, firewalls for web applications and network isolation

Results

Greater self-sufficiency
Acceleration of the release process of new functionalities
Simplified management of the development infrastructure and tooling
Worry-free technical platform management

Close collaboration with DevSecOps

Until recently, the Dutch Police worked according to the traditional OTAP methodology, but found it too slow and complex and wanted to switch to a more agile development process. This required closer cooperation between the development, security and operations teams (DevSecOps). Infrastructural manageability was another important factor for the Dutch Police.

The Dutch Police therefore chose Solvinity as a partner in 2019, partly due to the “Stretched DevSecOps” model. This methodology developed by Solvinity brings together in-house development and outsourced IT management. Literally, because in the DevSecOps team, the engineers of Solvinity work partly on location with the developers of the Dutch Police. This essentially creates a single team that extends beyond the company walls.

A stable, future-proof foundation

On Solvinity’s private cloud, Solvinity staff look after a stable and secure foundation for the Dutch Police, on which the teams of the Dutch Police can build their own websites, web applications, and microservices. The environment is set up as a multi-tenant container platform so that different teams can work cost-efficiently and securely in a single environment. The availability of the services on the platform is supported by a Content Delivery Network, which makes them easily accessible from anywhere, even at peak times. Security is also robust, including DDoS mitigation, firewalls for web applications, network isolation and other means of protection against intruders.

Thanks to the foundation laid by Solvinity, the Dutch Police can confidently focus on improving its services.

In our Integrated Delivery software release model, the Dutch Police and Solvinity take responsibility for the development, security, and management of their applications, safeguarding the entire process.

Accelerating innovation with CI/CD

A CI/CD pipeline has been jointly set up to facilitate this improvement. This automates the entire production process, including all required functional, technical, and safety tests. This has reduced the time-to-market for new releases. The successful trials with the 112NL app and the chatbot ‘Wout’ are excellent examples of the new-found innovation speed at the Dutch Police, which enables faster responses to social issues in contact with citizens. Another example is the Knowledge Platform Undermining, a collaboration between the Dutch Police and RIEC-LIEC for bringing people and knowledge together in the field of subversive crime.

The combination of a development platform, CI/CD pipeline, container platform and Stretched DevSecOps collaboration provides the Dutch Police with the full range of capabilities of our Integrated Delivery software release model. In this, the Dutch Police and Solvinity take responsibility for the development, security, and management of their applications, safeguarding the entire process.

The container platform also contributes substantially to the performance of the security task of the Dutch Police.

Better contact with citizens for faster intervention

The container platform of the Dutch Police does more than help lower the contact threshold, as was the aim with the chatbot. It also contributes substantially to the performance of the security task of the Dutch Police. Thanks to the stability of the private cloud container platform hosting the politie.nl website, the police were able to quickly process thousands of images of rioters during the lockdown riots in January 2021. Solvinity is proud to have been able to contribute to this.

Benefits of Integrated Delivery

  • Increased quality and predictability and fewer errors through automation
  • Faster time-to-market (and ‘time-to-innovate’!)
  • Stable and secure infrastructure thanks to containerisation
  • Cooperation in a single location enhances communication and speed
  • Better knowledge transfer
  • Fewer handovers and third-party dependencies
  • Increased opportunities for joint evaluation and learning

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