Scenarios of cloud solutions. Government Solutions

Aplana Company has prepared an extensive overview of scenarios for the use of Windows Azure platform services. We are pleased to share with you this interesting document that will be useful for any individual developers and companies involved in creating applications and considering the Windows Azure cloud as a platform for their solutions.

This guide consists of three parts, this is the final third part in which you will learn about solution scenarios for government organizations. The first and second part of the document are available at this and this links.

Government Solutions

The cloud platform is a convenient platform for creating solutions for government organizations. Examples of such decisions can be a portal for government organizations and a content management system for publishing open data.

Portal for state organization

The portal for government organization is a solution based on the "cloud" platform Microsoft Windows Azure, which allows you to publish on the web a variety of materials intended for public access.

The content management system (CMS, Content Management System) allows you to manage the publication of various resources on the websites of public authorities.

The system is implemented on the Microsoft Windows Azure platform and is highly scalable, accessible and fault-tolerant.

The system allows you to manage website content at the level of 4 main types of resources - documents, services (online services for the public), data and multimedia.

The system is implemented as a web application with an interface that allows you to easily and clearly manage various types of resources.

When working with documents, the system supports the following functionality:

• Publishing Documents
• Creating and editing a document card (metadata)
• Search for related documents and other types of resources
• Publication control (workflow)

When working with multimedia data, the system supports the following functionality:

• Publish multimedia data (photo, audio, video)
• Create and edit metadata
• Hosting video in Azure Media Services - streaming playback, optimizing quality depending on the characteristics of communication channels
• Search for related documents and other types of resources
• Publication control (workflow)

When working with data, the system supports the following functionality:

• Data loading
• Visual representation of data
• Data publishing
• Providing data access
• Search for related documents and other types of resources
• Publication control (workflow)

When working with services, the system supports the following functionality:

• Hosting Services on Windows Azure
• Publishing the web interface to the service
• Publish service access software (API)
• Creating and editing a service description
• Search for related documents and other types of resources

The system supports the ability to collect and analyze data related to the use of resources published with its help.

• Number of calls
• Downloads
• Number of views
• Technical data about users (browser type, type of generous device)

Technical implementation of the system

• Services and data are available through APIs
• Services - hosting (web / worker role)
• Data - Storage / Access, BLOB Storage
• Documents and multimedia are accessible through the web interface
• Documents - CMS, SQL DB
• Multimedia - Azure Media Services, BLOB Storage

Open Data Publishing Platform

The solution "Platform for publishing open data" is a content management system (CMS, Content Management System) for open data.

The solution is designed for IT departments of city administrations.

The solution can be used to download, visualize, publish and provide access to open data.

The solution is implemented on the platform Microsoft Windows Azure is highly scalable, accessible and fault-tolerant.

In general, the process of publishing open data consists of the following steps:

• Data loading
• Data presentation
• Data publishing
• Providing data access

Before directly loading data, the data owner performs the following actions

• Dataset definition
• Data cleansing
• Preparing Data for Download
• Convert data to one or more formats supported by the platform
• Download, display data in tabular form for preview
• Ability to delete downloaded data - in cases where additional cleaning, conversion, etc. are required.
• Specifying metadata - description of the downloaded dataset, filling in additional fields - category, type, refresh rate, etc.

The visual representation of the data is used in the publication process as a visual tool for checking the correctness of the downloaded data and as a means for selecting one of several possible representations of the data.

In the process of data consumption, visualization is used for visual familiarization with data, for obtaining summary information, for finding aggregated data and their representations for publication on websites.

The system supports the following visual presentation options:

• Graphs
• Cartography (with automatic creation of KML files)
• Widgets (for publishing on websites)
• Infographic elements

Publishing data completes the data cycle and makes it available for consumption. After publication, data is available in the following views:

• Machine Readable (CSV)
• Tabular
• Cartographic
• Visual

Note . The system supports the automatic creation of meta tags for SEO.

Upon completion of data publication, a report is created that indicates parameters such as the name and amount of published data, metadata, publication date and time, publication author, options for accessing data, ways of visualizing them, etc. P. - such a report can, for example, be published on the website to inform potential users of this data set.

Access to data is implemented in the form of “layers”. Each layer represents data in a predefined form:

• "Lower layer" - data in machine-readable and / or tabular representation
• “Middle layer” - data, in the form of a set of graphical representations
• "Top layer" - data presented in the form of aggregates, widgets, elements of infographics - i.e. in statistically processed form

It is assumed that a transition with between layers will be supported - i.e. users will be able to move from the upper to the lower level, thus revealing the data sets in their entirety.

Platform Usage Examples

• Integration with city services

Platform as a provider and consumer of data from online urban services

• Single portal of the city

Platform as an interface to a single portal of the city

• Publishing Infographic

Platform as a means of creating and publishing infographics

Possible platform extensions

• Ability to automatically generate software interfaces (APIs) to provide online access to data
• A means of collecting data created by the population (crowd-sourcing). Similar to open311
• Example: urban transport
• Example: the work of online city services
• Use of mixed data (open data from other sources)
• Example: city-level data + region-level data

The system supports the collection of the following data on its use:

• Number of visits
• Most popular datasets
• Most popular data views

About Aplan Company

Aplana company specializes in the development, testing and maintenance of software created in accordance with the specific requirements of customers and provides services for the implementation and integration of applications for corporate clients in the Russian and foreign markets. The Aplana company is a member of the IT Co. Group, it has representative offices in Russia, the USA and the UK.

Aplana is an official Microsoft partner and has a number of Microsoft Partner Awards in the field of software development ... in 2013, Aplana received the Partner of the Year award in the nominations ...

Aplana company was the first Russian company to become a member of Azure Circle, a program that brings together leading Microsoft partners who perform a full range of work on creating applications on the Windows Azure platform for corporate clients. Participation in this program allows Aplan to expand the range of services provided, raise the technical level and quality of ongoing projects, and also provides the opportunity to attract Microsoft resources when searching for solutions to emerging issues and suggestions for optimized design solutions.

The company employs developers who pass the Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications exam, confirming their qualifications in the platform and cloud technologies of Microsoft. In addition, Aplana has implemented a number of successful projects for Russian and foreign customers, including the Telegraph Media Group, UBM Medica, Sheremetyevo Airport and several other companies.