Georgia Ministry improves experience for users and IT staff alike

This case study examines how the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia partnered with Orient Logic to support remote learning. By redesigning its IT landscape using Red Hat® OpenShift® and Red Hat Application Foundations, the Ministry improved the user's experience, reduced outages, and accelerated software releases.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia
(the Ministry) realized that it needed to adapt its software so it could offer students remote
learning. Its Education Management Information System (EMIS) was the core system that
needed to change. IT partner Orient Logic worked with the Ministry’s EMIS IT department to
redesign the Ministry’s IT landscape based on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application
Foundations (formerly Red Hat Integration). As a result, the Ministry not only supported remote
learning but also improved the student and teacher experience, reducing outages by 99% and
accelerating software releases from once every few months to daily. The new IT environment
also improved the work life of its IT staff

Adapting to the new reality of remote learning
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, schools and universities around the world faced an unexpected
and unplanned crisis that demanded rapid change. Many educational institutes struggled to adapt
their lessons and teaching resources to constantly changing circumstances and implement distance
learning at very short notice.
The Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia was no exception. It became apparent that its
software was not designed for remote learning. The Ministry has a highly centralized education
system, with all public schools falling under the Ministry of Education. The software used for
assignments, grades, schedules, and so on—the Education Management Information System (EMIS)—
had 600,000 users, with around 15,000 to 20,000 logged in simultaneously on any given day.
EMIS had struggled to cope with peak loads even before the pandemic demanded distance learning.
First-grade registration caused a major surge each year. “There is 1 day a year when the whole
country tries to register their first graders,” said David Tatishvili, Deputy Head of EMIS at the Ministry
of Education and Science of Georgia. “Capacity had to be planned for the maximum number of
simultaneous users, up to 100,000. It meant we had a huge infrastructure just to accommodate that
one day.”
With systems monolithic and tightly coupled, data integration between systems took place
via database synchronization procedures every night, and all systems had to be stopped until
synchronization was complete. “At least once or twice a month, there was a sync error, which meant
the IT team had to work overnight to fix it to prevent system outage or data corruption,” said Merab
Gogolauri, Software Development and Cloud Infrastructure Director at the Ministry’s preferred IT
partner, Orient Logic.
Parents would give negative feedback if the system went down. “It was impossible to introduce rapid
changes without breaking something,” said Tatishvili. “That would lead to angry users storming EMIS
communication and social media channels throughout Georgia.”

Adopting a microservices approach
Needing a way to rapidly adapt its existing systems to the new reality, the Ministry turned to Orient
Logic. “We had to rapidly change and adapt the EMIS as the Ministry switched to distance learning
through Microsoft Teams,” said Gogolauri. “Agile software development and agile infrastructure
would help the Ministry reduce problems and resolve integration concerns.”
Orient Logic worked with the EMIS IT team to redesign the Ministry of Education’s IT landscape
based on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application Foundations (formerly Red Hat Integration).
The aim was to move toward a new system based on microservices, which would be more modern
and more agile, and could be rapidly developed and expanded.
Red Hat OpenShift operates as a central data integration hub for all applications. This cloud-native
application platform runs on the Ministry’s own cloud environment. Red Hat Application Foundations
provides data exchange, API management, and security for integration with external entities.
“EMIS used to have a lot of manual deployment, but now it’s all automatic,” said Gogolauri.
“Some systems are integrated directly through APIs.”

Improving user experience by reducing outages

Reduced system outages by 99%
Major upgrades in EMIS have significantly improved stability and, with that, user experience for teachers,
parents, and students in Georgia. Bugs no longer break the system and synchronization,
which was problematic before, now works flawlessly.
“We have not had major problems—even once—since deploying Red Hat Application Foundations to
replace our legacy data synchronization,” said Tatishvili.
Although Georgia has returned to offline learning in a classroom setting, distance learning could
easily be accommodated again if needed without causing the issues and, therefore, the downtime
seen during COVID. “The system is more robust now,” said Gogolauri.

Improved experience for IT staff
The modernizations and improvements are much appreciated by IT staff who no longer need to work
nights on quick fixes. The container separation found in Red Hat OpenShift has been particularly
welcome, as have the new rollback capabilities.
“We provided EMIS with a future-ready, technically superior solution based on Red Hat OpenShift,
where even if one system fails, it does not impact other systems at all,” said Gogolauri. “Any change
to any system is quick and easy. And if there is a problem, it is very local and EMIS can be rolled back
to the previous stable version with 1 click.”

Accelerated software releases daily
Implementing new development approaches and tools enabled by Red Hat OpenShift, including CI/CD
and GitOps, means software releases are significantly more efficient and frequent now. It used to take
several hours to manually deploy them and, as a result, it was only practical to deliver large numbers of
them once every few months.
“Implementing CI/CD and GitOps has streamlined the software development process,” said Gogolauri.
“We write it, Red Hat OpenShift deploys it, and no engineering assistance is needed. We can deploy
new software in small increments several times a day, accelerating software development projects.”

Building on pandemic success by revising legacy core systems
From the perspective of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, the new environment is a vast
improvement. The EMIS team has not been shy about recommending the rollout of Red Hat technologies
to other parts of the government. “The EMIS team has been telling people how happy they are with the
results,” said Tatishvili. “Informal user feedback from teachers and parents has also been very positive.”
Orient Logic is proud and happy to have helped the Ministry: “Synchronization was our headache, too;
we also helped them to be a lot more successful. All these changes led to a significant increase in
user satisfaction as there are no application outages anymore. They can also add new functionality to
applications on a daily basis,” said Gogolauri.
The next step is for EMIS to revise its old core systems, rewriting everything as microservices, and
implementing new features and software. “We have achieved ongoing development,” said Gogolauri.
“Our Red Hat technologies are based on leading open-source projects and provide unmatchedcapabilities to integrate any systems EMIS might require in future.” 

About the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia
The Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia aims to establish a modern and innovative
educational environment in close cooperation with civil society, providing lifelong learning and equal
access to quality education, in order to prepare each individual for future life and promote employment,
personal and professional development. In 2012, the Education Management Information System
(EMIS) was founded. By developing advanced information and communication technologies and an
electronic education management system, EMIS aims to further support the education sector

284 Views 0 Likes Introduce me  Read More