A group of Catalan universities wanted to share data more easily and launch digital services for their staff and students. With Cybernetica's help, they built CAMINS, a secure interoperability platform that lets their systems exchange data automatically.
The project brought together five universities (Universitat de Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Universitat de Girona and Universitat Rovira i Virgili), two observing universities and the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC), all of whom began work to modernise the Catalan university system.
The universities wanted to improve information sharing across institutions and develop digital services. And while staff and students already worked in a digital environment, many education processes were still manual.
As they planned their digitalisation journey, the universities recognised that they needed an interoperability platform to automate data exchange and enable digital services. The question remained how they could achieve this.
Deploying CAMINS on X-Road
Their answer was to build a platform using X-Road software as the foundation. X-Road is an open-source, decentralised data exchange platform that has become a reference for use-cases around the world. However, the universities needed expertise to implement and deploy it. Their next step was therefore to bring in people who could get it right, and they procured Cybernetica, one of the original architects of X-Road, for its expertise.
In 2023, Cybernetica and the universities, coordinated by CSUC, began work on the CAMINS project. Cybernetica helped deploy the new CAMINS interoperability platform, which enabled automated data exchange between the universities. The result is the implementation of a secure platform, aligned with EU standards, that can also be scaled in future for the broader digitalisation of the Spanish university system.
Going further: plugging into ViaOberta
In addition to deploying the platform, Cybernetica built custom developments as part of the project. One component created for the CAMINS system is the ViaOberta Adapter.
Catalonia has a system called ViaOberta, managed by the AOC (Administració Oberta de Catalunya) and designed to support information sharing across organisations. It acts as an aggregator for Catalan public administrations, so data that already exists across the public sector can be reused without requesting it again from each citizen. For CAMINS to benefit from this, it had to speak ViaOberta's language, which is why the adapter was built.
From the universities' point of view, the adapter is a subsystem belonging to the CSUC X-Road member. It acts as a service client, calling the services the universities provide. From ViaOberta's point of view, the adapter publishes those services into the ViaOberta catalogue, so other Catalan public administrations can use them too.
The impact is clear. The data a university already holds can flow through the public-sector aggregator instead of being collected again from students, enabling cross-institutional interoperability.
Launching digital services
With the CAMINS platform in place, it can become a launchpad for digital services. A catalogue of services could include:
- Checking whether a student's tuition fee has been paid
- Sharing language-level data between universities
- Verifying a student's existing degrees and graduation date at admission
- Sharing basic data on an enrolled student from one university to another
Each of these use-cases can be digitalised using the CAMINS platform. Streamlining these back-office processes and developing these services is where the platform's value can really be felt.
Continuing to scale the platform
Deploying the platform and building the custom developments were only the first phase. Throughout the project, Cybernetica supported capacity building, giving the universities' system administrators and developers technical training so that they could operate the platform independently.
Cybernetica continues to support the administration of CAMINS, providing ongoing maintenance and support as the universities grow familiar with the platform and develop new services.
"Cybernetica was a great partner in helping us deploy the CAMINS interoperability platform. They’ve continued to provide invaluable support as we administer the platform." – Albert Portugal Brugada, Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC)
He continued, "CAMINS facilitates the exchange of data between Catalan universities, and we are excited to leverage and build on it as we support the modernisation of Catalan universities.”
Interested to know more? Get in touch!