Barcelona City Council has retired and depreciated, after more than 50 years, the Mainframe, a powerful computer used mainly for processing large amounts of data and storage, which has allowed the City Council to analyze data in a single system since the late 1960s.
In order to manage tasks related to the register and the management of infractions on public roads, mainly fines, in 1965 the City Council agreed to purchase an IBM model 360-30, a system that surprised the world and that, for the first time , allowed large companies to integrate all processing applications into a single management system.
The purchase was finally made effective in 1967, through the improved model 360-40 with 64Kbbytes, which was integrated into the Municipal Computer Center, the precursor office of the current Municipal Institute of Informatics (IMI). This municipal body was in charge of solving the problems of the City Council’s data processes, its management bodies and the Private Municipal Public Transport Companies.
The Mainframe was the first powerful data processor available to Barcelona City Council
Barcelona’s town hall
During the 1973 period, the 360-40 model was replaced by an IBM 370/135 computer and another 370/145 model to develop teleprocessing and batch functions. During the 1980s, an IBM3090/150 and an IBM 4381 were installed, which made it possible to evolve with CICS transactions, using COBOL code and ADABAS-type databases up to the IBM zSeries BC12 mainframe that is currently being closed.
Until 2012, this great server has been serving the main corporate applications such as the population register, the electoral census, collection, taxes, human resources, the economic-financial system or the cadastre, among others.
Since the first Mainframe, Barcelona City Council has been evolving the platform until 2012 with the zSeries BC12. Since 2005, existing applications have been transformed into new environments, but their historical data was still needed.
A municipal worker of the computer services of the Barcelona City Council in the seventies
Barcelona’s town hall
In 2019, transactions to the Mainframe no longer took place and since then only inquiries and file reactivations have been made. A project was started to preserve the data in order to initiate its closure. The chosen solution allows the custody, preservation and consultation of unalterable data with a secure, scalable and flexible platform for the management and archiving of all types of information for long periods of time.
The project has been carried out in two phases, the first between 2019-2020 and the second in the 2021-2022 period. In total, 30 applications have been seized, the data of which has been reserved and the necessary consultations have been created.
The completion of this project has allowed the preservation of the data and the definitive closure of the Mainframe with great annual savings in the cost of licenses, hardware maintenance and professional services dedicated to the platform. The annual savings will be approximately one million euros.
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