By 2024FCCNdigital services unit of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)reached new milestones and major achievements. The results of the work carried out by all the teams in pursuit of the mission to transform science, education and innovation have figures that speak for themselves.
Over the past year, we have served a community of more than 600,000 students, teachers and researchers from Higher Education and Research Institutions. Through the 28 FCT digital services made available, it was possible to guarantee access to a high-speed network, ensuring the development of scientific knowledge, as well as enabling national and international connectivity and security for all.
Growing connectivity
O IPIP, the data communication service that connects education and science institutions to the global Internet, has connected 250 institutions to the Internet at speeds of up to 100Gbps. O Eduroamin turn, accounted for 117 million authentications roaming, an increase of around 3 million compared to 2023.
Strong investment in National Computing
The Advanced Computing saw major growth in 2024, with 117 national projects approved for Deucalion and MareNostrum 5, totaling 400 million CPU core.hours allocated to research and supercomputers, a figure more than nine times higher than the previous year.
Multimedia-driven collaboration
There are several highlights in multimedia services in the area of collaboration. O Filesender has more than doubled the number of GigaBites of multimedia content shared by the community to 296,000 GB. O Studio recorded 600 hours of production and recording, an increase on 2023.
Over the last 12 months, the Videocast has recorded 13,000 hours of live event broadcasts and Colibri was the platform of choice for 1.2 million meetings and webinars.
More knowledge for everyone
For FCCN 's Knowledge services, 2024 was a big year. Starting with the celebration of 20 years of the online library , b-onwhich also reached 20 million downloads of scientific articles.
A NAU, a pioneering e-learning project in Portugal, also has something to celebrate: it reached 84,000 new users of free online courses, 25,000 more than the previous year, and became PortugalX on the international edX.org platform.
O Arquivo.ptwhere the Web's archived information has been preserved since 1996, has reached 2 million pageviews. Over the last 12 months, Educast has produced around 4,000 educational videos and Ciência Vitae registered 18,000 new science CVs.
Before the year was out, there was still time to celebrate the important milestone of RCAAP - Portugal's Open Access Scientific Repositories, which reached 1 million scientific documents in open access.
2024 in safety
For FCT's security service, which responds to cybersecurity incidents within the RCTS network, 311 incidents were dealt with during the year just ended. The service that assigns different digital certificates to entities connected to RCTS saw the number of security certifications almost double compared to 2023, reaching 15,000.
Jornadas FCCN headed to Madeira
The year was marked by new milestones in the community's main event. The Jornadas FCCN 2024 exceeded 600 participants, with the participation of 35 sponsors and 120 speakers, who shared their experience during the 30 sessions over the three days of the event.
Zeal: the new digital service
This was also the year of the launch of the new FCT service, developed by FCCN: Zelothe national portal to support the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). This platform, developed in partnership with the General Secretariat for Education and Science and Construção Pública, E.P.E., enables organizations, with complete autonomy, to register, manage and monitor the processes associated with the GDPR.
These were some of the main results that marked the year 2024 and which are a benchmark for continued growth. For 2025, FCCN is renewing its commitment to take "Technology for Knowledge" further.
