Poland’s Social Insurance Institution (Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych, or ZUS) is increasing its use of Linux. ZUS signed a three-year support contract with Linux Polska to help with its high-availability clusters of virtualised Linux servers, the company announced in January.
ZUS, part of Poland’s ministry of Labour and Social Policy, manages social security benefit payments and health insurance contributions, and is a pivot point for health insurers.
In early 2018, ZUS announced it had succesfully completed the overhaul of its payment system, which was based on Linux among other operating systems. The project, which ZUS said was one of Poland’s [ok?] most important IT projects of 2017, developed and implemented a solution that helps the organisation manage PLN 19 billion (about EUR 4.5 billion) in health insurance payments, including contributions from some 24 million citizens.
High availability
Large organisation such as ZUS use virtualised Linux clusters to industrialise their business processes. Such clusters make it easier to manage the scaling of IT solutions and allow rapid launch of new applications, the company explains in its announcement (in Polish). Centrally managed, such clusters help to “automate detection and elimination of threats, and make it easier to configure applications and resources that demand high availability,” the company writes.
The 24/7 Linux Polska support contract is based on the use of Red Hat solutions.
ZUS is one of at least twelve central government organisations working with Linux Polska on open source software solutions, the company adds. The company has or has had contracts with several ministries, including Justice, Finance and Digitisation. Other central government clients are the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture, the National Health Fund, and the Office of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, according to the company’s announcement.