As one of UPSS (Unified Portal Software Solution) implementation, we have successfully implemented an Oracle Portal 10.1.4 for CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada). As part of the e-services project, MyCIC has demonstrated a creative way of integrating Oracle Portal with ePass. MyCIC has gone live since June 24th 2008 with first rollout to institutions and students who want to apply for off-campus work permit online.
While ePass is the de facto standard for Internet facing web applications within Government of Canada, its architecture design is not Portal friendly. As it is unlikely we can make epass work better with Oracle Portal, we had to work around the limitations.
Rumors are that epass is becoming mandatory for Government online services, this success means a lot to GoC departments and agencies who want to use Oracle Portal as their single point of entry with epass. Other applications become Portal's partner applications, thus take advantage of the Single Sign-On and other benefits Portal offers.
What is important with MyCIC Portal implementation is that our solution is not invasive to Portal. We didn't have to tweak Portal too much, rather, we added some configuration around Portal. So the result is a serviceable, maintainable Portal. In addition, the Single Sign-On function is technology-agnostic, your application can use .NET, PHP or anything besides Java. Security related functions (such as signature verification) can be incorporated into the app easily.
Well, how you use Portal is up to you. But for MyCIC, Portal provides an one-stop shop for CIC clients. Once enrolled, you can view your application status, start a new application and much more. What is interesting is that every CIC client will have a common ID with all programs and services across the department. Other typical use cases include personalized news, notifications, subscribed updates etc.
