Success story - Spanish National Police
Izertis, in partnership with Liferay, is modernising the Spanish National Police's intranet for 80,000 officers
The project, developed by Izertis as a technology partner of the Spanish National Police, transforms an obsolete and fragmented IT environment into a single, secure platform that can be accessed via mobile devices. The new intranet brings together 150 portals and enables staff to carry out administrative tasks directly in the field
The project
Spanish National Police is a public institution with a history stretching back more than 200 years and a workforce of 80,000 officers spread across the whole country. Its structure is complex, hierarchical and decentralised, with units ranging from public safety to organised crime investigation teams, including aerial and underground operations and large-scale public order operations. All these specialisms and requirements operate under a single chain of command.
Over time, that organisational diversity had moved into the digital realm. Each unit had its own portal, its own technology and its own management system. The result was a fragmented ecosystem that no one governed centrally and which had grown without an overarching vision.
In 2019, the organisation took its first steps towards improving the digital experience with Liferay through the Applicant Portal, a web-based project designed to manage access to the recruitment tests, which introduced a Content Management System (CMS) for the first time as a citizen-focused publishing tool. This initial contact laid the foundations for tackling a much greater challenge, namely the comprehensive modernisation of their internal communications.
The challenges
The modernisation of the National Police’s internal communications faced a very challenging starting point. In 2022, their intranet was a 20-year-old portal based on obsolete technologies and legacy databases. It had originally been conceived as a traditional software development project, meaning that it was built, put into production and, provided it did not cause any issues, nobody ever updated it again.
The result was a single page with over 1,000 links, all listed without any hierarchy. Under that portal, there were around 100 subsidiary sites, which were beset by several simultaneous problems:
• Each website had been developed independently, with its own technology, corporate identity and content management system.
• There was no comprehensive search engine: the same information could appear on up to ten different sites, with no efficient way of finding it.
• Managing sensitive information at each site was complex. As there was no centralised system, everyone managed their own affairs independently, which caused a number of difficulties.
The lack of a unified infrastructure also had a direct impact on security, a critical factor for an institution that holds data on virtually the entire Spanish population.
"We didn’t have the capacity to secure the sites. "As they were not all set up in the same place using the same technology, each one had the appropriate level of security – or no security at all," explains Bernardino Cortijo, a police inspector. Project Manager, National Police.
Added to these problems was an operational constraint. Of the 80,000 officers in the force, approximately 40,000 work on the streets, in vehicles, without a fixed workplace. Without an identity management system to enable access from outside the internal network, or an architecture adapted to mobile devices, the existing intranet was inaccessible to half the workforce.
The solution
To carry out the project, the National Police chose Izertis as its technology partner. For 18 months, a joint team comprising professionals from Izertis and civil servants with first-hand knowledge of the organisation worked on modernising the platform. Twelve months were spent on development and implementation, and a further six on getting the system up and running. Izertis supported the National Police throughout the process, contributing its expertise in digital transformation and its specialisation in Liferay.
The project was not limited to the implementation of technology; it also encompassed migration, the organisation of content, the modernisation of the infrastructure and the promotion of autonomy among the management teams.
The first step was to draw up an inventory. Around 100 existing websites were identified – some of which did not even have a link from the main portal – and their actual needs were analysed. The conclusion was that most shared the same basic structure, which made it possible to design a standardised template in line with the official corporate identity (logos and standard colours) on which to build all the portals in a consistent manner.
At the same time, it was necessary to build the infrastructure from scratch. The legacy environments were not sufficient to support the project, so the team implemented a private cloud based on OpenStack, which brought greater agility to deployments and enhanced security. The entire deployment was carried out on-premises, without exception.
A new identity management system, developed in collaboration with Izertis to replace the previous system, was also implemented on this infrastructure. From that point onwards, the intranet became securely accessible from any device and location, opening up access to the 40,000 civil servants who work out in the field without access to a fixed workstation.
Change management was a strategic pillar. The team’s approach was not to convince reluctant users, but to develop a tool that was practical enough to ensure its adoption would not cause any friction.
The result
The new intranet consolidates internal communication within the Spanish National Police on a unified, secure and scalable platform. With 150 sites now live, the organisation has, for the first time, a consistent corporate identity across all its internal digital channels.
The most notable findings include:
• Publication agility: a comprehensive portal based on standard templates (which cover 80 per cent of typical requirements) can be rolled out in a matter of days. Previously, the same process involved drawing up technical specifications, securing funding and managing a development programme that could take between one and two years.
• Operational autonomy: hundreds of content managers manage their own sections without having to rely on the IT department for every update.
• Granular security: the permissions system allows you to precisely define and control access across the entire organisational structure, from general information to restricted content.
• Mobile intranet: the 40,000 police officers who work out in the field can access the platform from their mobile phones, without having to go to a fixed workstation at a police station.
The impact on day-to-day operations is immediate. An officer who previously had to return to the police station to process the paperwork for an incident can now complete it from their vehicle whilst travelling to a new call-out. "This has enabled us to significantly increase the organisation’s productivity. You used to take a while to get to a call because your car was at the police station. "Now the car’s always driving round and round," says Cortijo.
The platform has also opened up possibilities that were not envisaged during the initial phase. As well as centralising communication, the solution developed on Liferay has enabled the integration of new internal services, such as an appointment-booking application for the shooting ranges, with full traceability and synchronised user data.
The collaboration between the National Police, Izertis and Liferay reflects a long-term digital strategy. The next step will be to incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities so that each professional profile can access their own knowledge clusters in a contextual and conversational manner.
‘We are living in a society where nobody wants to go and find a document and read it. We all want to open a chat, search for information and have the AI summarise it for us. ‘Anything other than that is no longer of any use to the officers,’ concludes Cortijo.
The project reflects Izertis’s approach to digital transformation: combining technology, specialist knowledge and support to tackle complex challenges and turn a corporate platform into a useful tool for day-to-day work.
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