In 2024, the FCCN, digital services unit of Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), reached new milestones and great achievements. The results of the work carried out by all teams in favor of mission to transform science, education and innovation present numbers that speak for themselves.
Over the past year, we have served a community of over 600,000 students, faculty, and researchers from higher education and research institutions. Through the 28 digital services provided by the FCT, It was possible to guarantee access to a high-speed, high-speed network, ensuring the development of scientific knowledge, as well as enabling national and international connectivity and security for all.
Growing connectivity
THE IP, a data communication service that connects educational and scientific institutions to the global Internet, totaled 250 entities connected to the Internet, with speed up to 100Gbps. The Eduroam, in turn, accounted for 117 million authentications roaming, an increase of around 3 million compared to 2023.
Strong investment in National Computing
The service of Advanced Computing had great growth in 2024, with 117 national projects approved for the Deucalion and MareNostrum 5, totaling 400 million of CPU core hours allocated to research and supercomputers, a figure more than nine times higher than that recorded in the previous year.
Multimedia-driven collaboration
There are several highlights in multimedia services in the area of collaboration. Filesender reached more than double GigaBites in multimedia content shared by the community, totaling 296 thousand GB. The Estúdio registered 600 hours of production and recording, which represents an increase compared to 2023.
Over the past 12 months, the Videocast registered 13,000 hours of live event broadcasts and the Colibri was the platform chosen for 1.2 million meetings and webinars.
More knowledge for everyone
For FCCN's services in the Knowledge area, 2024 was a great year. Starting with the celebration of 20 years of the online library, b-on, which also reached the 20 million downloads of scientific articles.
THE NAU, project of e-learning pioneer in Portugal, also has something to celebrate: it achieved 84,000 new users of free online courses, 25 thousand more than the previous year, and became PortugalX on the international platform edX.org.
THE Arquivo.pt, where the archived web information since 1996, reached 2 million page views. Over the past 12 months, the Educast produced about 4 thousand educational videos and the CIÊNCIAVITAE registered 18,000 new science CVs.
Before the year ended, there was still time to celebrate the important milestone of RCAAP – Open Access Scientific Repositories of Portugal that reached 1 million scientific documents in open access.
2024 in safety
For the FCT security service, which responds to cybersecurity incidents within the RCTS network, during the year that has just ended, it was possible to deal with 311 incidents. The service that assigns different digital certificates to entities linked to RCTS, saw the number of security certifications almost double compared to 2023, reaching 15 thousand.
FCCN Conferences headed to Madeira
The year was marked by new milestones reached at the community's main event. FCCN Conference 2024 exceeded the 600 participants, had the participation of 35 sponsors, and 120 speakers, who shared their experience throughout the 30 sessions during the three days of the event.
Zelo: the new digital service
This was also the year of the launch of new FCT service, developed by FCCN: Zelo, the national portal for GDPR support (General Data Protection Regulation). This platform, developed in partnership with the General Secretariat of Education and Science and Public Construction (EPE), enables organizations to register, manage, and monitor GDPR-related processes with complete autonomy.
These were some of the main results that marked the year 2024 and that serve as a benchmark for continued growth. To 2025, the FCCN renews its commitment to taking “Technology for Knowledge” further.
