City of Lorient: Information System Mapping with myCarto

Case Study - City of Lorient, a local authority committed to modernizing and securing its digital services

City of Lorient in figures

A local authority of 57,000 inhabitants in the heart of Southern Brittany
A rich information system with more than 500 application modules documented
230 inter-application flows identified to streamline exchanges

Objective: Structuring and sharing IS mapping

The City of Lorient chose myCarto to centralize and structure the mapping of its Information System.

With a collaborative approach involving both business units and the IT team, the authority relies on myCarto to:

Document applications and their dependencies
Map inter-applications flows
Link processes, business activities, applications, technical components, and machines
Anticipate the impact of upgrades and maintenance operations
Improve communication and decision-making around the IS

Context and Challenges

The City of Lorient is a local authority engaged in modernizing its digital services for its 57,000 residents. Its IT Department (DSI) must address the diverse needs of municipal services: administrative management, citizen services, public facilities, and urban infrastructures.

Despite an experienced team, the IT department manages a complex Information System, with:

Dispersed documentation and difficulty consolidating knowledge
A heterogeneous application portfolio covering many business areas
Legacy applications still in use
Growing needs for impact analyses and technical audits
The necessity of improving communication between technical teams and business departments

Identified key challenges include:

Fragmented documentation: diagrams and procedures not centralized
Lack of visibility : difficulties obtaining a global, up-to-date vision of the IS
Limited Reactivity : Dependency on key individuals for certain applications
Operational risk : difficulty anticipating impacts of major changes

Collecting IS knowledge is one step, but structuring it to ensure long-term usability requires a dedicated tool and method.

In this context, myCarto emerged as the solution, providing the IT Department with a centralized, reliable, and accessible vision of its application landscape.

By involving the CISO and system administrators, the IT Department wanted from the outset to make it one of the tools driving the city’s Information Security Policy. »

Guillaume LORHO – Head of Application Studies and Projects – Deputy Director

Why the City of Lorient chose myCarto

Faced with the growing complexity of its Information System, the IT Department of Lorient launched in 2020 a structured IS urbanization initiative.
They chose to build this initiative around myCarto, a more complete, collaborative, and scalable mapping solution.

Clear objectives for IS urbanization

With myCarto, the IT department in Lorient is pursuing several priorities:

Build a reliable, shared inventory of the application portfolio
Identify functional redundancies and critical dependencies
Document inter-application flows, especially APIs
Facilitate Business tools beteween municipal services
Involve all teams in a transversal, structuring project

Selection criteria for the mapping solution:

When searching for a solution, several factors were decisive:

An intuitive interface for quick adoption
The ability to document and connect all IS components, from technical to business
A collaborative dimension, engaging both technical and business teams
Scalable features to support future needs of the local authority

IS Mapping in Action: Successful GDPR Integration

Among the projects that benefited from IS mapping was the overhaul of GDPR management.

Before myCarto, identifying GDPR-related data and their processing was done in Excel spreadsheets – time-consuming and unreliable.

Now :

GDPR compliance is directly integrated into myCarto
Data is structured and reliable
Links between applications, modules, and processes are transparent and accessible

The IT Department already had this IS mapping project, and it seemed quite natural to us to integrate GDPR within this transversal tool. »

Mathilde Hurier – Data Protection Officer and Organization Advisor

Managing and Exploiting IS Data through Mapping

myCarto offers multiple views adapted to each stakeholder’s needs, from business processes to technical infrastructures.

- Real-time dynamic graphs make it possible to check data compliance and quality
- APIs facilitate data extraction and automatic backups
- Process views simplify communication with senior management and business units

“With myCarto, the process view seemed very valuable to us, because it’s much easier to discuss processes with a general director than to talk about application modules with cryptic names.” – Mathilde Hurier

In real time, we can generate our graphs very efficiently to check that the data we’ve entered is compliant. »

Mathieu Lemoine – Application Project Manager – IS Urbanization Lead

Tangible Benefits Gained with myCarto

Since its deployment, myCarto has delivered the following benefits to the City of Lorient:

A consolidated, centralized vision of the entire IS
Improved communication and collaboration between technical teams and business units
Time savings in audits and impact analyses
Reduced risks through quick identification of critical dependencies
Strengthened governance and cybersecurity management
Simplified, centralized GDPR compliance