The European Commission declares the SUNFISH Project (SecUre iNFormatIon SHaring in federated heterogeneous private clouds) "completed successfully" and underlines in its final report how the international research project carried out by MEF has achieved all the objectives previously set.

The program, which has involved 11 European partners coordinated by MEF Information and Innovation Systems Office (DSII), was defined by the Commission in charge of project evaluation, "a relevant, risky and demanding pioneering effort" able to bring concrete benefits both to the institutions involved and to the wider European research and innovation community.

The new platform code has been made available open source to ensure the technological solutions developed during the project to be freely used.

During three years of research, SUNFISH has developed a secure integration platform for the protected sharing of data, creating three different use cases that have shown concretely how the new solution will solve the problems of the public sector in fields such as the secure sharing of confidential information between private clouds and the safe use of public clouds.

The platform produced will also allow a great rationalization of public information infrastructures, thus reducing expenditure and, thanks to the use of blockchain and smart contracts, ensure the secure management of huge amounts of data.

Such advantages will be exploited, for example, by the Cloudify NoiPA program, which will use the tools prepared by SUNFISH to guarantee security in the exchange of sensitive information between MEF and other public administrations.

The possible uses of the instrument however, do not end here. The Commission highlighted, indeed, as a project strength the concrete definition of sustainable strategies for the reuse of the platform, underlining how the implemented solutions have already been partially implemented in different areas (for example business, research and education), thus increasing the technological capabilities of all the participants.

With SUNFISH, MEF is recognized as an innovation model at the European level, as well as an example to follow for the implementation of digital transformation projects, demonstrating how even the public administration can be a key player in the introduction and dissemination of new technologies in the society.

To learn more, read the news on Sunfish Project’s website.