Rhineland-Palatinate

The State Pedagogical Institute of Rhineland-Palatinate (RPL) has, since 2018, jointly realized an integrated solution for identity and access management in schools together with Manage Now and the Fujitsu predecessor organizations. The close, long-term partnership has enabled the development of a central identity and access management system that connects all participants in the school system in Rhineland-Palatinate in a GDPR-compliant, scalable, and user-friendly manner – thereby significantly supporting the state’s digital education strategy.

Requirements

Before the introduction of the “Bildungsportal RLP” in Rhineland-Palatinate, there were several historically evolved and independently developed platforms, each with its own user management and limited pedagogical integration. The goal was to make the existing systems more accessible and to more strongly pursue the “pedagogy first” approach.

Specifically:

• Central file storage: Connecting pedagogical tools via a central file storage. A change to a resource is reflected across all usage scenarios.
• Collaboration: Support for collaborative work among teachers and in the classroom with students.
• Identity management: A central identity management system ensures that users only need to log in once to access the services individually enabled for them..
• Data protection / legal certainty: The new platform is GDPR-compliant and allows the use of various services and educational media in a legally compliant manner with regard to licensing.
• Standards: The use of standardized interfaces ensures that new services can be easily integrated
• Scalability and performance: Even with growing user numbers and the integration of additional services, response times remain reliably low and the system robust.

The goal of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was therefore to create a uniform, GDPR-compliant, scalable, and pedagogically meaningful solution for all schools in Rhineland-Palatinate. Together with an experienced partner, an innovative outcome was to be developed within the framework of a co-creation approach.

Solution

In close cooperation between the Pedagogical State Institute Rheinland-Pfalz, further stakeholders of the state, and the team from Manage Now, the Bildungsportal RLP was developed. The special success of the project lies in its partnership-based approach: The solution was not “delivered from outside,” but rather jointly developed in a continuous exchange between specialist and technical managers. The Pedagogical State Institute contributed its in-depth expertise in everyday school life and in administrative processes, while Manage Now contributed its technological experience in the areas of identity management, data protection, and system integration.

Central features of the solution

• Uniform user management with Single Sign-On (SSO): Teachers and learners as well as other educational stakeholders sign in once and receive automated access to all enabled services in the Bildungsportal RLP.
• Modular, multi-tenant architecture: Each school acts as its own instance within the system – with its own user maintenance and rights assignment.
• Integration of existing services: Whether school campus, video conferencing system, digital bookshelves or external platforms such as such as AI; mathematics portals or similar – all central applications were connected via the Bildungsportal RLP.
• Scalability: The solution is designed to currently serve over 400,000 learners, teachers and employees of the school administration at around 1,500 schools with high performance – even under strongly fluctuating load.
• Flexibility and extensibility: New systems can be integrated at any time via standardized interfaces.

Results

The joint development of the Bildungsportal RLP has enabled key advances for digital learning in Rheinland
Pfalz:

• Standardization of the digital infrastructure: Schools access a common system with clearly defined standards –with full pedagogical freedom.
• Secure and simple access to digital tools: Teachers and learners benefit from a consistent user experience – without complicated registration processes.
• Information and data protection security: The state fulfills its responsibility toward sensitive educational data at a high level.
• Relief for schools and IT managers: Central identity management significantly reduces manual processes and creates room for pedagogical innovation.
• Strengthening the promotion of media literacy: Easy access to digital tools supports the anchoring of media education in teaching.
• Model character for other federal states: The modular architecture of the Bildungsportal RLP allows transferability to comparable structures