Equalit

An ICT collaboration of and for local governments in the Netherlands; that is Equalit. The joint ambition: to reduce ICT costs, increase quality and thereby reduce the vulnerability of the organisations. More than 2300 civil servants work time and location-independent via Equalit's Private Cloud. More than 250,000 citizens can arrange business 24/7 with the organisations participating in Equalit.

Anita Potters is an information architect and product manager of the “Verbindend Fundament Equalit", (in English: Connective Foundation for Equalit), the VFE. “The VFE consists of various services that we provide for our participants in the 'share' Equalit. Think of purchasing business applications for the share, generic design based on the jointly determined architecture, functional management, hosting and making links via the broker/service socket for our participants, with national facilities based on national standards. Xential will now be added to the VFE as a product".

At xential, Hans Lankamp is responsible for the 'Equalit account': "The nice thing is that Equalit and xential have been working together for several years. So we have gained a lot of experience when it comes to integrating and harmonising applications. We use that experience for new developments at Equalit, but of course we also take it with us in the ten shared service centres and other forms of collaboration that use xential".

Xential stands for simplicity and efficiency and is therefore exactly in line with the objectives of Equalit. Anita: "A jumble of templates and documents had arisen among the various Equalit participants. We were looking for a solution with which we could make a number of generic templates available to our participants by default via our share".

The search ended at xential. Anita: "Xential is a good and stable product, in which standard integrations are available, based on developments of national Dutch standards such as CMIS and DCR. The software of xential is also multitenant available. That is exactly what we want to migrate to in the coming years, a multitenant environment".

Hans: "At Equalit we are now taking a next step at server level. We want to get rid of separate servers per participant. But to one solid server with multiple bases/containers. That makes it important that we make integrations based on DCR, CMIS, and also a broker like Enable U. Otherwise it wouldn't be feasible at all. So in fact, we are slimming down and streamlining, so that Equalit will soon be able to do the management easily itself".

"At xential they show that they are open to implementing new developments," continues Anita, "I expect that within Equalit we will be working on integrations to the “Message Box” of the Dutch Government, from different disciplines, such as taxes and the social domain. At xential, they think along with us and are by nature used to integrating with all kinds of applications".

Anita is very pleased with the accessibility and expertise of xential's service desk staff. "When xential is contacted for an incident or issue, there is almost always someone ready to assist us. When we submit a report via the support page, there is often a response at short notice or we are contacted by telephone to clarify the issue. They immediately indicate when they expect to provide feedback. That works very well."

Anita thinks that planning is an area where improvement is desirable: "Xential is an organisation where flexibility is of paramount importance. In itself, that's fine. The downside is that timetables may or may not get off the ground. As far as I'm concerned, xential employees can indicate more concretely when consultants are available. In that case, just pass on a number of possible timeframes".