The Integration Platform (PI) is a core technology platform, service-oriented and based on open standards, providing to the Public Administrations a shared tool that allows the interconnection of various information systems and therefore, electronic multichannel services.
It provides cross-sector electronic services to the Portuguese public administration entities across all levels of government, allowing them to better respond to the civil society demand with open standards, high security, reliability and delivery, to increase government efficiency through the reuse of installed capacity in public administration. It facilitates the provision of multichannel services for citizens and enterprises through a shared electronic infrastructure.
The Integration Platform acts as a central Interoperability node with a catalogue of web services, provided by the authentic sources of information that can be used and reused by the different entities. With a single connection, one information system can potentially exchange cross-sector data with all other cross-sector public information systems, being already used by several public entities in Portugal.
Major features of the integration Platform include a Canonical data model that allows data normalization within the Platform, but also de-normalization according to the client’s system data model, which is very useful for legacy systems integration. The Identity Federation Mechanism that allows meaningfully data exchange within the different cross-sector information systems; for example, a message sent by a Justice identifying the citizen with its sectorial number (civil identification number) is received by the tax system with its VAT number. However, due to data protection regulation, the federation database only has tokens that aggregate the different sectorial identification to a global token. Only the sectorial information systems can decipher the number. It also has Orquestration capability, by checking the combination of factors of socioeconomic deficiency, opting for an eligibility criterion that coincides with the benefits granted by the Social Security system and tax Authority systems.
For the purpose of this submission, the Integration Platform is described as a social innovation enabler.