The Judiciary of Mendoza digitizes its front desk systems using Google Cloud
About Poder Judicial de Mendoza
The Judiciary of the Province of Mendoza is a provincial body comprising nearly 3,300 agents and providing access to judicial services in the province of Mendoza in Argentina.
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Contact usThe entity migrated its processes to the public cloud to implement easy-to-use, transparent, and efficient justice-related systems.
Google Cloud results
- 9,000 submissions per week running on a GKE cluster
- 2.6M digital documents submitted with no stability or access issues
- Improved service level objective (SLO) to 99.995% in 2022
- Significant savings by storing documents in the cloud
- Increased agility and security in judicial processes and software development
Increased agility in software development
The Judiciary of the Province of Mendoza is the body of justice responsible for the timely and agile protection of people's rights in the province of Mendoza in Argentina. With 3,300 judicial agents, it boasts modern, effective, and efficient technologies, organization and management systems fostering transparent communication with the province's residents.
As a public institution, its purpose is to ensure that all Mendoza inhabitants enjoy their rights and guarantees in accordance with the National and Provincial Constitutions, international treaties, and organic and procedural laws.
To this end, a few years ago, it began its first experience using and implementing the public cloud, and deployed its Digital Front Desk (MeeD) system to reduce the need for attorneys to submit files in person. After obtaining successful results, the entity considered expanding the use of the cloud.
Strengthening the path to digitalization
One of the main goals of the Judiciary of Mendoza was bringing innovation to the provincial government and developing affordable, easy-to-use, transparent, and efficient judicial systems.
This involved the possibility of attorneys submitting digital documents, not only to circumvent certain obstacles, such as the closure of agencies during the pandemic, but also to boost procedural agility in an increasingly digital world.
The challenge was enormous as most processes were manual, face-to-face, and paper-based in this sector. Although the Judiciary had a digital filing system, it was based on the manual filing process and was not available 24/7.
First, the Judiciary of Mendoza had to address the challenge of transforming its processes. Then, it had to break down resistance to change and create teams to adopt the new digital transformation culture.
"There was strong resistance to electronic submissions in the institution, and this was not only down to technological issues, but culture as well. Little by little, digitization made it possible to put an end to those misconceptions and proved a feasible and cost-effective strategy."
—Mauricio Ryan, Head of DevOps Team, Mendoza's JudiciaryTechnologies up to the challenge
Driven by the goal of implementing a system of digital and smart judicial files and strengthening file management, Mendoza's Judiciary started a process of implementing cloud-based microservices, with a strong cybersecurity and data management policy.
Following recommendations of other industry players, the institution decided to rely on Google Cloud solutions, which also enabled it to incorporate technologies encompassing agile methodologies in software development.
The lower cost of containers versus other vendors was critical for the implementation of a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster, which enabled the Judiciary to automate deployments and the management of development, testing, and production environments. Cloud SQL allowed it to use databases as a service, while Cloud DNS helped improve access to applications.
Other solutions were implemented, such as Cloud Storage, for document storage purposes, and Pub/Sub, to ensure communication between microservices adopted by the organization.
"Technology was the main reason why we chose Google Cloud. We wanted to use Google Kubernetes Engine, turn to cloud-native development, and achieve CI/CD. In terms of price, convenience, and user experience, Google Cloud was the obvious choice."
—Mauricio Ryan, Head of DevOps Team, Mendoza's JudiciaryA continuous service supported by the cloud
Thanks to Google Cloud, the Judiciary of Mendoza has improved process agility and scalability, while increasing the productivity and motivation of its development teams, who now have technologies to make their tasks easier.
Services deployed and infrastructure self-provisioning have not only helped overcome the challenge of driving process digitization, but have also improved software and application development times.
Thus, the Judiciary has managed to process 9,000 submissions per week on a GKE cluster, freeing the team from server and network management tasks and facilitating deployment automation.
Cloud Storage has enabled the organization to enhance the management of millions of documents, and also to reduce costs and optimize service levels. Storage-related savings have been significant, especially when compared to the cost of disks for servers, which are more expensive and difficult to buy.
In fact, since the implementation of Google Cloud, users have completed 2.6 million submissions, taking up 1.6TB, without any issues regarding responsiveness, stability, security, or data access. That's approximately 15,000 submissions per week, with peaks of 36,000.
In terms of security, the cloud has provided the organization with an ideal solution to safeguard and control access to documents, which had many issues when performed on-premise.
Creating a culture of development and innovation
Google Cloud tools have not only helped Mendoza's Judiciary adopt DevOps culture practices and break down misconceptions regarding the use of public cloud, they have also been one of the main drivers of digital transformation.
Attorneys are now able to file their documents remotely, which has helped reduce crowds at offices and freed up staff for other tasks.
In addition, this transformation has benefited developers, who have increased their productivity due to the automation of deployments, shorter development cycles, and the release of bug fixes.
"Attorneys are very used to working manually and on paper. That's why they naturally reject digitization due to security and information availability concerns. However, since we implemented Google Cloud, service uptime and attorneys' confidence have improved. The project has undoubtedly boosted the digital transformation of the Judiciary of Mendoza."
—Mauricio Ryan, Head of DevOps Team, Mendoza's JudiciaryMore and more cloud in the future
The Judiciary of Mendoza is currently considering several proofs of concept to extend the benefits of Google Cloud to other areas.
Upcoming projects include the idea of implementing a chatbot to help improve customer service, in addition to the use of georeferencing to increase the efficiency of notice serving routes.
It is also willing to deploy a scheduling solution to simplify the hearings schedule, as well as a natural language processing service to help identify urgent cases and improve their processing. All this is based on the digital transformation platform provided by Google Cloud.
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About Poder Judicial de Mendoza
The Judiciary of the Province of Mendoza is a provincial body comprising nearly 3,300 agents and providing access to judicial services in the province of Mendoza in Argentina.