A grant application system adapts to the needs of the city
“The City of Turku’s Kulta2 system is perhaps the most dynamic system I have seen in my 20-year career. Working on city projects is rewarding, as the interaction with the city’s service managers and key users is straightforward.”
The need
The Kulta2 application was originally developed to meet the grant application needs of associations and individuals. There was a need for a customer portal through which grant applications could be made, and for a processor side through which the applications in question could be processed and sent for payment through the city’s ERP system.
The solution
ATR Soft created a small application at the heart of which Kulta2 operated. The system consists of an open, customer-operated portal, where people authenticate using a strong Suomi.fi identity and through which associations, companies and individuals send their applications to the City of Turku’s processors. On the processor side, the city’s processors either approve or reject the grant applications sent. The processor side includes many functions such as form management, notification management, message management and organisation management.
The service can support the handling of almost any grant or permit issue through dynamic forms, and the published forms are valid for the period set for them. Kulta2 supports the creation of almost any kind of form template using a form editor, which consists of elements that are separately created. These elements therefore also come in several different types and validators can be set for them. An approved application can be placed for payment in the city’s ERP system, either as a batch payment, or as a one-off payment using the Maksatus application developed separately by ATR Soft. The application’s other connections have been created against the City of Turku’s service bus.
The application handles everything from dynamic form templates to form processing, with the exception of a separate iFrame part, which guides the applicant to the correct Kulta2 form. The DW transfer has also been developed by ATR Soft, and this application takes care of reporting-related functions for the use of the city.
The application’s functions have been developed over the years, and its technologies were last updated at the turn of 2020/2021. Kulta2 operates on the present Tomcat, and is an Adopt Open Java-based application. Oracle serves as the database. Up-to-date versions of the technologies are in use, and the application has been updated “out of the box”. The auditing of availability, usability and data security was carried out in the first half of 2021.
Technologies
Tomcat, Apache, F5, Oracle, Java, Javascript (jqGrid, jQuery, jQuery-UI), HTML (Freemarker)