Faced with the growing challenges of managing sensitive data and the need for extreme agility, the Ministry of the Interior and Suadeo reveal the backstage of a visionary and unusual project: an interdepartmental hypervision platform, designed and deployed in less than 18 months for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024. A roadmap for CIOs and business leaders.
Kubernetes: The key to agile and resilient infrastructure
To oversee a global event such as the Olympics, a robust and scalable infrastructure was imperative. Kubernetes has taken this challenge on by ensuring exemplary resilience.
Without Kubernetes, we would have been less equipped to do this project.
Eric Tiquet, Deputy Director of Innovation and Data at DTNum Ministry of Interior
Through Kubernetes, the Ministry and Suadeo have been able to:
- Automate CI/CD deployments
- Put new features into production in just 15 minutes.
- Maintain safety and business continuity in parallel with developments
We industrialized the deployments. They lasted 15 minutes, followed by 3⁄4 of an hour of validation before the system opened. For the teams, it was a formality.
Mohamed Bendjebbour, Head of R&D Suadeo
This architecture has allowed a constant evolution of the functionalities, directly aligned with the business needs, defined by their side every week or even every two weeks.
If there was a topic to improve, a new feature, we could do it as many times as necessary, because we had put the conditions of security and digital confidence beforehand.
Eric Tiquet, Deputy Director of Innovation and Data at DTNum Ministry of Interior
Security “Restricted Broadcast”: a requirement without compromise
There was no compromise possible with sovereignty and security. Security has been considered from the beginning, at “Restricted Release” levels, that is to say information is deemed sensitive
Eric Tiquet, Deputy Director of Innovation and Data at DTNum Ministry of Interior
The sensitivity of the data processed required an exceptional level of security. The Suadeo platform was audited and certified at the Restricted Release level in a few months, a first for a project of this scale.
The whole system has been approved : soft, infrastructure (intrusion audits, code audits, …), human, process…
Mohamed Bendjebbour, Head of R&D Suadeo
This approval in February 2024, in less than a year, it had never been seen at the level of the Ministry of the Interior. We are on a solution that is safe, and on which we can work with serenity with data that, by definition, is sensitive.
Colonel Christophe Deshayes, Chief of Staff of the National Strategic Command Centre of the Ministry of the Interior
Each data and its use is traceable, auditable and compliant with the highest standards.
We are able to enter very finely in the user rights and authorizations. Everything that is done on the platform can be tracked in real time. Everything is recorded, everything is auditable. Security is set up directly in the Data. Even if a person tries to connect, it is filtered upstream and we are able to secure the access and use of data sets.
Mohamed Bendjebbour, Head of R&D Suadeo
Digital sovereignty with the Pi Cloud
Deployed on the Pi cloud, a sovereign cloud operated by the Ministry of the Interior, this solution ensures total control of sensitive data while offering:
- Full compliance with regulations.
- Unprecedented flexibility through automated CI/CD deployments.
Pi cloud is a Cloud Native platform, with CI/CD deployment chains, automatic deployments, which allows us to focus on the use of the business, with very short iterations
Mohamed Bendjebbour, Head of R&D Suadeo
Combining Kubernetes with the Pi cloud has led to industrialized deployments between development environments, recipe and validation environments, and production environments.
Data Mesh and modularity: keys to the Autonomy of the Trades
The “Data Mesh” means to decentralize the management of data. More than a concept, it is a software architecture, the “foundations” of the Suadeo platform, structurally and natively Data Mesh since its creation in 2020. It gives back control to the Business users on data management, governance, management rules, security rules, quality… throughout its life cycle. They no longer depend on IT teams for their Data projects.
Second strong point: the simplicity to create a custom-made application, in limited time. Each application is parameterized from the pre-integrated objects within the Suadeo Self Data Services® platform. Modules are integrated with demand to align with business needs. The DataViz accelerators, Open Data Use, Report or Digital Hub saving valuable time for all new projects.
When we started working with Suadeo, there was no interdepartmental handout that could be used by everyone, all departments, all departments, in an integrated and collaborative way.
Colonel Christophe Deshayes, Chief of Staff of the National Strategic Command Centre of the Ministry of the Interior
We had to take what was in the various tool boxes and adapt it, with a population that did not have time to attend courses, so it had to be immediately operational, with deadlines that were super short.
Eric Tiquet, Deputy Director of Innovation and Data at DTNum Ministry of Interior
In the case of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games project, each liaison officer, without technical competence, could, in real time:
- Create, share, upload, exploit all data, regardless of their format (field observations, mapping, tables, insights…), in complete autonomy.
- Mastering the platform in less than 30 minutes.
Result: 1,500 operational liaison officers to monitor and report on all live situations (security, logistics, transport, health, environment…) in connection with the Olympic Games. All relied on the platform to share information in real time and report strategic summaries to the authorities.
