Results
Of changing and stricter requirements
In terms of safety, reliability and speedTowards a future-proof infrastructure
With real-time performance insight
tech stack
Used tools & technologies- DevOps
- CI/CD
- Cloud
- Microservices
Since 2013, PDOK has been responsible for making up-to-date GEO information available in the Netherlands. These datasets (available to everyone) are provided with proper metadata and are accessible via RESTful APIs and OGC services, among others.
In carrying out government functions, up-to-date and adequate information about locations is essential for applying for grants and permits or making transactions. Location information also helps in analyzing social issues. An accurate picture allows policy and solution directions to be formulated.
changed desires and imposed standards
It is essential that the information in the platform be functionally correct and always up-and-running. The platform must be reliable, robust and scalable. Indeed, after its launch in 2013, it quickly became clear that the platform was gaining tremendous traction. The first year saw 580 million hits, 5 years later the number of hits grew to 10.8 billion with 8.6 million unique users.
Jeroen also notes that suppliers and end users have changing requirements and that imposed standards (European INSPIRE standard and the Dutch e-government standards) and desired functionalities are firmly subject to change. They have therefore not been idle in recent years and their ambitions for the future are high.
In recent years, Team Rockstars IT has helped the Kadaster make the infrastructure of PDOK’s platform future-proof. They can now access more and larger datasets faster, more reliably and more securely.
According to Jeroen, it is ideal to be able to fall back on software developers who have dealt with these “hatchets” before. IT Rockstars shape the architecture from their experience and develop the applications directly in the scrum team.
PDOK has created real-time visibility into platform performance and prides itself on its continuous improvement. For example, they have recently made strides in making applications cloud-ready by publishing Public Docker images, among other things, and testing with Kubernetes environments. It’s all about scalability and reliability. It started with monolithic applications on application servers, then to an environment running entirely on Docker containers to making applications cloud-ready.
Grow with customer demand
Innovation is the key to future success. PDOK wants to continue to surprise its users with new features. The user should not notice anything about the enormous growth and crowding of the platform.
In addition, governments continue to demand new standards, requiring them to remain flexible with an eye to the future. To be prepared for future growth, they remain busy placing microservices in the landscape as independently and logically as possible.
By properly aligning CI/CD with their microservices landscape, they can scale up and grow with customer demand in a very targeted way. In addition to the microservices theme, research into potential cloud solutions for the future is also on the agenda.
PDOK X TEAM ROCKSTARS IT
When you can fall back on the experience of professionals from Team Rockstars IT with technical innovation expertise at the time of a transformation or digitalization, it gives a lot of peace of mind and confidence within the team. In addition, PDOK notices the positive effect of the IT Rockstars on team dynamics. They bring colleagues along with their knowledge and standards, which really raises the level of the team.
