Why Plone Works Well For
Government Agencies
Presenter: Ken Wasetis
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com
Contextual Corporation
www.contextualcorp.com

Overview
● Advantages of Using a CMS
● Advantages of Open Source
● Special Considerations for Public Sector Web Sites
● Why Plone is a Good Fit
● Advantages of Plone vs. Other CMS Tools
● Recommendations
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Using a CMS
● Improved Departmental Efficiences
● Standardized / Automated Workflows
● Easy for Non-Technical Users to Edit Content
● Allows IT to Focus on Strategic Technical Work
● Audit Trail / Accountability
● Content Versioning
● Comparison of Content Revisions
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Using a CMS
(continued)
● Control Permissions By Department / Role
● Separation of Content and Presentation
● Reuse of Content (Manage One Copy)
● Searchability / Management of Metadata
● Scheduling of Publishing / Expiration of Content
● Consistent Brand / Look and Feel
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Open Source
● Flexibility to Customize and Extend!
– Warning to Integrators: Explain Who Develops Plone
● Community
– Smart orgs learn to work with / sponsor / leverage
● Abundance of Integrators
– Compare Plone to Vignette, Interwoven, etc. not
Java/.Net/PHP Developers – it's a CMS!
● Access to Source Code
– To Assess and/or Improve
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Open Source
(continued)
● Get Useful New Features First
– Commercial tools significantly lag OSS
(think RSS, wiki, forums, blogs, AJAX, etc.)
● Internationalization / Translations for Interface
– Plone has developers all over the world!
● Quality
– More eyeballs on the code
● Security
– Not through obscurity
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Special Considerations:
Public Sector Web Sites
● Accessibility Guidelines (W3C, etc.)
● Usability (Like MS Word via Browser)
● Open Source License Concerns
● Extensibility / Flexibility / Customizations
● Versioning / Audit Trail
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Special Considerations:
Public Sector Web Sites (continued)
● Workflow / Permissions
● Security
● Search-engine Friendly
● Cost
● Support
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Why Plone is a Good Fit
● All the Benefits of a CMS
● All the Benefits of Open Source
● Thanks to Linux!
– For breaking through the FUD
● Thanks to Microsoft, IBM, Oracle ...
– For lacking real ECM vision for so long
● Thanks to Vignette, Interwoven, RedDot ...
– For being really expensive!
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Plone vs. Other CMS
Tools
● Cost (software, consulting, support)
● OSS License / Transparency
● Extensibility (and 80/20 rule)
● Foundation / IP Leadership / Strategic Planning
● Unrivaled Community / Support
– 80-180 developers/users on #plone 24/7
– Specialized mailing lists
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Advantages of Plone vs. Other CMS
Tools
● Superior Workflow Capabilities
● Superior / Fine-Grained Permission Enforcement
● Superior Version Control / Audit Trail / Locking
● Usability, Accessibility, i18n
● Security Options (static, cloud)
● Road-tested
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Recommendations
● Check out www.plonegov.org
● Stop Free-loading / Give Back / Interact / Improve!
● Keep the Plone Logo as your favicon.ico ;)
● Need more U.S. Govs to come out of Closet
– Sponsor a sprint or conference
– Put out press release – helps Plone, helps you!
● Many Large U.S. Govs are using Plone or in Process
– They just can't / won't tell you that
– They do share notes among selves, so it's growing
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com

Follow-up
Ken Wasetis
Email: ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com
IRC: ctxlken
ken.wasetis@contextualcorp.com