Impact

CommunesPlone/PloneGov is build on top of a widespread avant-garde open source technology. The innovation resides in the technical practices of development but also on the original collaborative model. Collaboration and growing a community are key points of our innovative approach. Where the traditional approach induces competition between different actors, the PloneGov model, inspired by the Open Source development mechanism, promotes collaboration reuse of already implemented solution. A positive result of sharing knowledge and practices is the impact on human resources and motivation. Originally started early 2005 by individuals from the public sector in two small towns, Seneffe and Sambreville (Belgium), PloneGov is a project resulting from the roots, answering practical and pragmatic needs. Thanks to this bottom-top approach, PloneGov suits perfectly the user’s expectations. To solve the problem of lack of human resources, budget and expertise, the leaders worked closely with an international network of SME (Zea Partners) and local SME. The benefits of involving SME are the transfer of expertise and the international dissemination of the project. On the other hand, thanks to the absence of a formal action plans usually drafted by large administrative bodies, PloneGov enjoys enough flexibility to adapt to opportunities. It can easily innovate and evolves in an organic way. For example, new developments become a priority when an agreement has been reached among participants (towns IT experts) about functionalities, budget and required human resources. An iterative approach also characterizes the project: new ideas are worthwhile trying and shared with others. The benefits of involving IT experts from several towns result in producing more generic solutions adapted to the users needs.

Track record of sharing

The project innovative aspects are attracting the specialized press and researchers. The project has reached over 40 public administrations. A first expression of interest for collaboration has been received on June 10 by the "Africa e-Parliaments Action Plan" project of UNDESA. This project aims to bring eGov solutions to six African parliaments, and would be interested to share tools with PloneGov. “Unlike what is often thought, the conception of a open source project doesn’t necessarily attract external contributors”. To prevent this risk, a good relationship has to be established with the open source community. Zea Partners, an international network of SME, played an important role in establishing trustful relationships between local governments and the Plone Community. Many concrete actions facilitated this process, such as giving numerous talks throughout Europe and also the USA or Latin America, or organizing the first international Plone eGovernment workshop in Belgium. There are many links between PloneGov project and Plone community. The developers (public and private) regularly participate in joined activities (sprints, workshops, meetings) organized by the community. Thanks to the community also, the skills available in each of the participating towns and regions can be combined and optimized. Some towns will provide developers, others, communicators or designers. All participate in the project according to their skills and bring their cultural background to the project.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Benefits of a close collaboration between public sector, OS community and SME Plonegov is the base of the development of an innovative economic ecosystem including several actors as local governments, SME and an open source community. Together with SME, the community assumes part of the initial investment in term of free promotion, community events to build up confidence, coaching, transfer of knowledge, etc. Local governments on their part open a new, potentially important market to SME. Lesson 2 - A good knowledge of existing solutions avoids the duplication of efforts. By pooling efforts, the technical coordination enables a better use of resources; reduce costs and speeds up results. The potential to attract new towns is big because over 100,000 EU towns and regions nearly all have the same needs. Lesson 3 – The difficulty to develop an innovative approach within the public sector. The open source software model of development is new and often misunderstood. A risk would be to under evaluate the work required to sustain and manage a growing mutualisation project. Some activities as coordination, information, training, etc. should ideally be taken in charge by a central body. A bottom-up project may raise concearns within the traditional top-down administrative structure.