SAGA Soluciones has developed a solution based on OpenCms that is used by the Spanish provinces of Seville, Granada and others to produce their official gazettes, including public notices and announcements. This has resulted in a 90% reduction in production time and effort.
Official gazettes for Spanish districts with OpenCms
Content managers are provided with tools that streamline the production of the provincial official gazettes. The OpenCms based solution implements the complete life cycle of the notifications that make up a gazette, from insertion to publication, eliminating repetitive tasks and reducing the margin of error.
Thanks to OpenCms, the production of our official notices has become easier, faster, and much less prone to errors.I. Gómez, Document Management Specialist
The problem: manual and fragmented processes
The Spanish Boletines Oficiales Provinciales (BOP) publish local laws, administrative decisions, judicial notifications, public job openings, procurement notices, and tax-related announcements. They serve as official channels for communicating legal, administrative, and governmental information at the provincial and municipal levels.
Prior to the implementation of this solution, there was no tool adapted to the specific needs of the BOP management.
This forced administrations to rely on fragmented and highly manual processes. These required a significant amount of work not only to layout the gazette using PDF editing tools, but also to manage essential aspects such as registration, data integrity verification, digital signatures, and accounting procedures.
In addition, the lack of an integrated platform made it impossible to connect with other tools and systems involved. This increased fragmentation and the risk of errors.
Publishing authorities, on the other hand, often had to provide their content by email with documents in formats like Word or PDF. This increased the possibility of errors and the time it took to process each application.
With OpenCms, we’ve cut production time for official notices by 90%, freeing our users for more important work.A. Ruiz, BOP Edition Coordinator
The solution: OpenCms
To meet these needs, SAGA Soluciones selected OpenCms for several key reasons:
OpenCms stands out for its flexibility, allowing data to be abstracted into documents and metadata, which facilitates customizing workflows to meet the specific needs of the public administration.
It is ideal for complex administrative environments because of its ability to efficiently integrate with systems such as digital certificates, electronic signatures and verification seals, registries, electronic offices, and other management tools.
In addition, SOLR is natively integrated as an indexing engine. This enhances search capabilities by providing detailed and fast indexing of content.
Another major advantage of OpenCms is its modular design. This ensures scalability and optimal performance on demand. It also makes it easy to expand and adapt the solution to meet future needs.
Furthermore, OpenCms offers several options to customize its look and feel, allowing to adapt it to the corporate image of the administration without affecting the core functionality.
Finally, OpenCms has an active community and professional support options that ensure the long-term sustainability and constant updates that keep the platform at the forefront of technology.
The solution developed by SAGA Soluciones implements the complete life cycle of the official notices that make up an Official Gazette, from insertion to publication. It eliminates repetitive tasks and reduces the margin of error.
For the automated insertion of official notices, specific areas have been integrated for authorities, which can be accessed through digital certificates. From direct output through built-in editors that allow users to write and layout notices without technical knowledge, to direct upload of PDF documents based on templates, multiple modes of content creation are provided.
The intuitive, template-based system lets us focus on strategic tasks rather than repetitive paperwork.L. Fernández,, Official Publications Manager
Content managers now have the tools to streamline BOP production and significantly improve response times in terms of time from receipt of a public notice to publication. This includes management of payments and collections, and integration with accounting and auditing systems.
All of this is deployed on a Java EE-based infrastructure with support for Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB. It is clustered with a master server and two publishing nodes for high availability.
The deployment is supported by Alkacon OCEE, which increases performance and simplifies configuration and management of the cluster environment. OCEE optimizes the synchronization between cluster nodes, ensuring optimal performance and high fault tolerance. This is critical for ensuring service continuity.
Managing high workloads has become much easier, enabling me to respond effectively even during peak periods.S. García, BOP Edition Writer
Impact of the OpenCms solution
The results of this solution have completely transformed the processes for managing official BOP gazettes.
First, content providing authorities can now manage their notices through an automated, template-based system. This has resulted in a 90% reduction in production time and effort.
In addition, the solution has given the BOP gazettes a consistent look and feel that makes them easier to read and search for information. It even allows a gazette to be downloaded in formats such as JSON or XML, expanding the ability to use and reuse data.
In terms of integrity, the solution ensures that all submitted information is stored in a secure and verifiable manner. It provides full traceability from the time of notice insertion to publication. This minimizes the risk of human error and increases confidence in the system.
In addition, high availability and fast response times are ensured by a robust infrastructure supported by a clustered environment managed by Alkacon OCEE. With 99+% availability, users enjoy a reliable and efficient system, even during peak demand.
The ability to integrate this solution with other administrative systems, such as accounting and auditing, adds an additional level of value. It allows administrations to work in a more coordinated and efficient manner, while ensuring the integrity of information.
The result is a comprehensive modernization that reduces costs and improves the user experience.
Scalability and future
The solution has been implemented in the provinces of Seville and Granada. It will soon be operational for the provincial governments of León and Huesca. Adoption in other regions is expected.
The development of the application follows the standard OpenCms development paradigms in modules, without modifications to the core. This makes it easier to keep up with new OpenCms versions released by Alkacon and makes updates an easy and predictable task.
The integration capabilities of OpenCms have drastically simplified our workload and improved efficiency.C. Martínez, Administration Technician
Satisfaction of content managers and end-users
When asked about their experience with the OpenCms-based solution, authorities and content managers appreciate how simple the system is to use, the significant time savings, and opportunities to concentrate on higher-priority work.
With the tools built into the system, authorities can now easily and efficiently manage their public notices from creation to publication. Pre-defined templates minimize the risk of errors. This allows them to spend less time on administrative tasks and focus on other priorities.
In addition, content managers have seen a significant reduction in the workload associated with collecting and validating communications related to public notices. This has resulted in increased productivity and faster response times.
In the specific case of the Provincial Council of Seville, the office in charge of the management of the official gazette of the province has been able to offer new services to the municipalities of the province without increasing the costs.
The OpenCms based solution has also enabled them to better manage peak demand during periods of high activity.
Overall, these improvements have streamlined all processes in the creation of the “Boletines Oficiales Provinciales” and significantly increased user satisfaction.
