Prodam: Securing more efficiency for São Paulo's public services with Google Cloud AI
About Prodam
Empresa de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação do Município de São Paulo (known as Prodam) is responsible for all the IT infrastructure and data processing of the municipality of São Paulo. For 53 years, it has been developing management, security, and innovation technologies aimed at building a more connected, intelligent, and humane city.
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Contact usProdam increased productivity by automating processes, improving performance, and reducing team response times to meet the demands of the city of São Paulo.
Google Cloud results
- Enhanced capacity to meet the demands of the city of São Paulo
- Increased productivity through activity automation
- Improved performance and response times for internal teams
- More agile source code generation and validation
- Stronger standardization of processes in the company
Faster and more targeted deliveries thanks to Vertex AI
Empresa de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação do Município de São Paulo (known as Prodam) is the technology partner of São Paulo City Hall and acts as a strategic integrator of information and communication technology solutions.
With 53 years of history, Prodam focuses on developing technologies for management, security, and innovation with the aim of building a more connected, intelligent, and humane city.
The company's primary objectives include optimizing public services, enhancing the city of São Paulo's infrastructure, and improving citizen living standards, all while endeavoring to tackle urban challenges through innovative solutions.
In 2022, Prodam embarked on a phased migration to the cloud, consolidating operational partnerships with several providers, including Google Cloud. The company's aim in adopting the cloud was to boost the efficiency and innovation of the services it offers, thereby bolstering responsiveness, scalability, and flexibility to address the city's evolving needs.
"We chose Google Cloud because of the partnership we established, how easy and fast it is to access its services, the low-cost trial, and the top-notch consultancy support."
—Felipe de Oliveira, Systems Engineering Manager, ProdamFelipe de Oliveira, Prodam's Systems Engineering Manager, highlighted that before this project, his department had grappled with limited capacity to cope with more projects and had no free time to implement enhancements and innovations.
"We needed to cut down on lead times for software deliveries and create capacity to carry out planned improvements in our software engineering process, which has now become easier," he pointed out.
Generative AI as a lever for transformation and operational efficiency
Felipe underscores the practical and collaborative nature of the project, highlighting the active participation and commitment of Google Cloud experts. "By working hand to hand, we've managed to transform abstract concepts into solutions integrated to our operations in only two months, which has added tangible value to our environment and met our expectations."
Throughout this journey, Prodam realized that Google Cloud's generative artificial intelligence was a critical tool for optimizing operational efficiency and driving process standardization within the company, which boasts approximately 830 employees.
"With a complex structure with various departments, areas, and ways of working, standardization poses a major challenge," explained Leonardo Sepúlveda, Chapter Lead in Quality and Testing at Prodam.
The teams began to conduct tests and gradually integrated generative AI into software development activities, thus improving the data organization and service capacity of internal teams.
"While exploring Vertex AI, we identified several opportunities for improving our productivity and capacity. As a result, we've managed to streamline our deliveries to achieve better performance and quality."
—Leonardo Sepúlveda, Chapter Lead in Quality and Testing, ProdamBreakthroughs in work routines and delivery quality
Although the solutions were implemented gradually at Prodam, the benefits resulting from adopting Google Cloud were soon noticeable.
"Vertex AI provides us with predefined parameters and simplified prompts that we can tailor for specific purposes. This led to the immediate gain of accelerating our processes," remarked Leonardo.
Prodam representatives emphasize that adopting the cloud in the public sector entails not just a technological change, but a profound transformation in how they work.
"With Google Cloud AI we have expedited tasks that used to be entirely manual in the past, such as creating and reviewing user stories. This automation has resulted in tangible productivity and efficiency gains."
—Leonardo Sepúlveda, Chapter Lead in Quality and Testing, ProdamAccording to the Chapter Lead in Quality and Testing, there has been a significant improvement in employees' daily routines, allowing them to focus more on analytical and intellectual tasks.
"Previously, the quality analyst had to manually scrutinize each user story, meticulously assess every single acceptance criteria, and then devise test cases. Now, AI reads the user story, processes the text, generates a detailed test plan with scripts, and, if needed, initiates automation by crafting test scripts in Cypress or Playwright," he explained.
Simplified AI: ease of use and positive feedback
Leonardo emphasized the invaluable support provided by Google Cloud experts in infrastructure, particularly with the use of Cloud Run, to ensure seamless operations, especially considering that Prodam's team had no prior knowledge of artificial intelligence.
"The Google Cloud team guided us in designing solution architectures, integrating technologies, and facilitating communication between them," said Leonardo, noting that having in-house AI specialists to harness the benefits of the platform was not necessary.
"As we had no data scientists or machine-learning professionals on our staff, the Google Cloud team's input offered a fresh perspective that proved invaluable. Their hands-on involvement filled a critical time and manpower gap for our innovation activities," he added.
Felipe mentioned that the new features have received highly positive feedback from Prodam's developers.
"Some of our partners are external software factories. The code they generate is integrated into our environment via requests, which used to burden our internal team with validation tasks. To address this challenge, we adopted Gemini Code Assist to streamline source code generation, and we implemented Vertex AI in our pipeline to speed up the validation process. This change was very well received by our developers," Felipe said.
More technological innovation for public service
Leveraging technology has enabled the Systems Engineering Department to accomplish more in less time.
"Our goal is to consistently enhance service quality and efficiency for our end stakeholders—our citizens. Let's not forget that we have the potential to impact millions of lives. Our developments have immense potential: there are many public entities relying on what we do," emphasized Felipe.
Looking ahead, the company is steering its AI models towards multimodal capabilities, integrating image interpretation using Vertex AI to obtain even more comprehensive and targeted outcomes, compared to purely text-based models.
There is also a concerted effort to incorporate automated testing through Gemini. "Gemini has proven instrumental in developing and automating functional testing, an area previously underserved. Recognizing its potential, we intend to maximize its usage for better results in the short term," said Leonardo.
Capitalizing on the digital solutions underlying this end-to-end public service transformation, Prodam is continuing its commitment to ground-breaking public service for the benefit of city hall, São Paulo, and its citizens through ongoing innovation.
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About Prodam
Empresa de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação do Município de São Paulo (known as Prodam) is responsible for all the IT infrastructure and data processing of the municipality of São Paulo. For 53 years, it has been developing management, security, and innovation technologies aimed at building a more connected, intelligent, and humane city.