IEPC Guerrero drives the development of secure systems thanks to Google Cloud and Xertica
About IEPC Guerrero
The Electoral and Citizen Participation Institute of the State of Guerrero (IEPC Guerrero) is the public body in charge of organizing local elections and citizen participation processes in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Xertica
Xertica is a Latin American Google Cloud partner with agility and innovation in its DNA and backed by a first-class technology stack.
Thanks to Google Cloud solutions, IEPC Guerrero improved availability and resource management, implemented an efficient testing method, and reduced project delivery times.
Google Cloud results
- Significant improvement in testing and rollout times
- Reduction of RTT on the Institute's website: from 84ms to 49ms
- No service downtime
Improved the organization's data infrastructure
As the electoral authority in the Mexican state of Guerrero, the Electoral and Citizen Participation Institute of the State of Guerrero (IEPC Guerrero) is the body that organizes local elections and citizen participation processes for the election of local authorities, such as governors, congress representatives, and mayors.
Employing 179 full-time staff, and nearly 230 during election periods, the Institute operates in a state with approximately 3.5 million inhabitants, and focuses on automating administrative tasks and voting processes.
More security, more innovation
In an ever-changing world, trust is key when it comes to information processing and security, especially in the public sector, given the sensitive nature of data, and the scale and complexity of processes.
Along with the need to apply security policies correctly, including on-premises and cloud backups, the Institute has faced the challenge of ensuring technological resources are available to all departments and units.
"We're now modernizing several processes and promoting software development or solutions that support the Institute's projects."
—Pablo Miguel Orbe, Programmer Analyst, IEPC GuerreroThis drive for innovation has led to one of the most important projects: the Preliminary Results Program (PREP), which provides citizens with early but unofficial voting results. To address this development effectively, quickly, and securely, the Institute started considering an infrastructure that offered everything it needed: the cloud.
A challenging path to the cloud
Updating IEPC Guerrero's IT systems was of utmost importance to implement the various stages and activities related to the upcoming 2023-2024 voting processes, and laid the ground for adopting new solutions.
The priority was to find fault-tolerant solutions to support several contingency scenarios, such as loss of connection, power failures, cyberattacks, and website crashes. Ensuring that no unauthorized person could access the stored voting information was also vital.
In a context in which several local public agencies were already migrating to cloud providers, the Institute, helped by the partner Xertica, decided to assess Google Cloud, which offered the ideal conditions of security, costs, and coverage that the organization needed.
In addition to the possibility of gradually incorporating the use of cloud tools, such as email and remote meetings, the main benefit offered by Google Cloud was the chance to implement a firewall to prevent denial-of-service attacks. It was also essential for the Institute's team to have simple and easy-to-understand documentation for an organization not familiar with this type of technology.
Cloud solutions, a key choice
The Institute first turned to Google Cloud solutions in March 2021, with the urgent need to implement this technology before the elections taking place in June that same year.
Xertica played a key role in guiding IEPC Guerrero through its migration. From explaining the main concepts to holding meetings to assess the project's needs, the partner provided guidance to make adopting Google Cloud quick and easy.
The organization gradually began migrating from an on-premises infrastructure, with physical servers and a small site, to the cloud and to an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model.
"The adoption process was complex to begin with due to the large amount of information and infrastructure upgrades. But thanks to the experts' guidance and the partner's availability, we managed to complete implementation in a very short timeframe with excellent results."
—Pablo Miguel Orbe, Programmer Analyst, IEPC GuerreroGoogle Cloud solutions enabled the Institute to run three large projects. The first one was PREP, the program for the publication of preliminary election results.
Using Compute Engine and Filestore, the organization created a client-server architecture with local and remote databases that enabled it to centralize, process, and synchronize information across 28 sites in the main cities of the state of Guerrero.
The Networking system, based on Cloud DNS and Filestore, was also developed. It involved incorporating the network configuration (VPC) that was critical to the interconnection between projects.
Finally, the SIE project, based on Cloud SQL, was aimed at hosting permanent resources, such as instances of the Institute's website and the SQL instance for managing administrative sites and systems.
An infrastructure that brings results
Implementing Google Cloud has provided the Institute with several benefits. First, it has helped simplify resource management: the organization can now add or remove resources dynamically based on project requirements without the need for administrative procedures.
Generating sandboxes was also crucial for evaluating the new solutions developed before implementing them, thus saving time and reducing the possibility of bugs.
Finally, applying more robust protection policies as a result of Google Cloud technology enhanced trust in the security of the information handled by the organization, both internally and provided by citizens.
IEPC Guerrero's current cloud-based infrastructure improved resource availability and management, and helped reduce delivery times. For example, this had a positive impact on implementing the new PREP during the elections in September 2021.
Since the migration, the Institute has had no service downtime, and the round-trip time (RTT) to the Institute's website has been reduced from 84ms to 49ms.
Google Cloud's support was crucial in achieving the necessary improvements in the program development and infrastructure. By simplifying and strengthening some components, program implementation, interconnection, and publication were highly successful.
"Google Cloud enabled us to create a sandbox using the same architecture where the solution will be implemented, in a short timeframe, and with an efficient use of resources. Once the project is tested, it quickly goes into production, which helps us improve our delivery times."
—Pablo Miguel Orbe, Programmer Analyst, IEPC GuerreroAn ally for future projects
Results achieved with the PREP thanks to Google Cloud have furthered the organization's interest in adopting more cloud solutions and using them for other projects.
The future goal is to modernize the traditional systems still used in the organization, separating them into layers, and making them more fault tolerant. To this end, besides the Google Cloud solutions already implemented, the Institute is now considering load balancing technologies, new services, such as App Engine, and the use of APIs as a service and serverless applications.
As with the developments already in place, the key to this growth will be the possibility to rely on easy-to-understand documentation, as well as the support of a partner along the migration journey and the implementation of a cloud services platform like Google Cloud, which ensures that the overall solution operates correctly.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About IEPC Guerrero
The Electoral and Citizen Participation Institute of the State of Guerrero (IEPC Guerrero) is the public body in charge of organizing local elections and citizen participation processes in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.
About Xertica
Xertica is a Latin American Google Cloud partner with agility and innovation in its DNA and backed by a first-class technology stack.