Presentation in 2010 to Cork County Council on the Opportunities in Open Source and Where the Irish Locla

1. Open Source in Local Government
Tim Willoughby
LGMA

2. Context
• Local Authority Termination of Microsoft Enterprise
Agreement
• Potential for Open Source Across the Sector
• Open Source Applications already in Use

3. Currently See 5 Themes
• Desktop Application Replacement
• Content Management System
• Document Management
• GIS
• Back Office
• Telephony
• BI
• Development (Traditional, Apps)

4. What Are LGMA Doing?
• Open Source Workshops
• Open Mind
• Open Source RFI
• Inventory of Skills and Abilities
• 5 Category areas
• CMS
• Doc Management / Case / CRM
• GIS
• Back Office
• Desktop Applications

5. Met with
• Accenture • Indytech
• Acquia (Drupal) • Infinity (Asterix) • Provident
Technology
• Alfresco • Interleaf
• pTools
• Azucca • Kerna
• Sage
• Cloudware • LERO
• SecureLinux
• Compass Informatics • MAC • SinglePoint
• Digital Alchemy • Maithu • Sirius
• Digital Technology Mgmt • Mentea • Sord
• Dublin City of Science • Microsoft • SpanishPoint
• eDocs • Newgrove • Tara Hill
• Enovation • OHanlonO’Dowd • Tascomi
• iOl • Open Source Solutions • Titan
• IBM • PMI • Triangle
• IMGS • Propylon

6. Local Authority Support
• CMS (Drupal)
• Cork, Fingal, Wicklow, South Dublin, Limerick City, LGMA….
• Doc Management / Case / CRM (Alfresco, Sugar, vTiger)
• Meath, Leitrim, South Dublin, Cork County
• GIS (Open Layers, Map Server)
• LGMA, Kildare, All
• Back Office (PF
Sense, MySQL, PostGres, PostMail, Zarafa, etc)
• Limerick City, South Dublin, Cork County, Fingal
• Desktop Applications (Libre Office, OpenProj, etc)
• Galway City, Cork City, Limerick City, Cork County, Libraries

7. Everyone else is using Open source…..
• More than half of all web servers (>91
million) run Apache (September, 2010)
Cloud/SAAS
• ~2.5 million total Alfresco downloads
(Alfresco, 2010)
Applications • 2 million Drupal downloads last year (2010)
• 2.5 million articles (in English alone) on
Developer Tools wikipedia, the world's 8th busiest web site
according to Alexa (2010)
Web/App Server • 6 million blogs hosted on wordpress.com
which Alexa ranks as #28 (2010)
Database • Drupal and Joomla web sites handle more
traffic than 17 of the Fortune 20 corporate
OS sites (Burton Group, 2008)

9. Understand the French Definition of
Gratis v Libre

10. The Dual Open Source Approach
• This approach offers the most potential to Local Government.
• There are certain products in the Open Source Arena that follow the Dual
Approach
• Alfresco - Web Site Development and Presentation
• eGroupware - Mail / Calendar / Contacts / Helpdesk
• SugarCRM – CRM application
• MySQL
• ... And many more
• Each of these solutions offer an Enterprise Application which costs
similar or in the case of CRM more than the equivalent proprietary
product
• Each also offer a Community product which has no cost for the
license, however, the costs for support, maintenance and bug fixes can
be very high.
• The only way to counteract this cost Risk is to become an active part of
the community or share the risk across the whole Local Government
Community

11. Why Consider Alternatives for Office Automation
• Ease of access
• Ability to collaborate
• Open Platform (PC, Mac & Linux
Compatibility)
• Open Standard - Open Document Format -
• Cost! MS Office 2007 / 2010 is €149 - €550
per license.

12. Open Source Research and Learning to date
• The Open Source Community is out there
• There are Many, Many Open Source solutions
• Open Source Successful projects are based around
communities.
• The route to success for Local Authorities is to mimic the
Open Source Community model
• There is an Opportunity now to look to adopt Open Source

13. License
• There are upward of 71 open source licenses which fall
into 3
families:
• Give me credit
• Give me fixes
• Give me everything
• We do have to understand the differences and the
potentials.

14. Open Source Lowering Barriers for Entrants
•Low cost and scalable infrastructure (Linux,
MySQL, Apache)
•Quality software available at no licenses cost
•Key software components available for
integration
•Can make changes to Open source code for
extra value
•Development and run time environments for
fast and iterative deployments (PHP, Perl,
Python, Ruby on Rails)
•Communities for instant help and fast
innovation cycles
•Open Source as a Engine for Web 2.0

16. What is Open Source

17. What is Open Source

18. In other words.. All technologies

19. Why Open Source?

20. How to Integrate Open Source into our IT strategy
•Insist on Open Standards - Increases Agility
- flexibility and responsiveness Evaluate Open
Source and Commercial software options
•Can use a mixture of open source and
proprietary
•Don’t need a separate Strategy—
interoperability I migration considerations are
important
•Like all Software Solutions – have to Balance
up-front costs against recurring costs

21. What do we have to do?
• Understand the Community and Maturity of Open Source - Broad
industry support are important
• Sustainable business models are critical
• Healthy ecosystem of Solution Providers and Business Partners
essential
• Establish policies for working with Open Source software
• Educate company teams about OSS before they work with it
• Implement a management system to review, approve, and track the
use of OSS inside the company, and contributions of company
software assets to external OSS projects
• Understand Open Source Licensing – need to establish a process to
help us understand the terms of the licenses and the procedures
required to comply with them
• Make decisions based on both business and technical factors

22. Open Source attitudes and expectations…
New Entrants Technology
Pushing limits
Experimenting Existing
Demanding Workforce
Exploring
Use any tool Trying to keep up
Trying to change
Struggling
Given up
Going to die
Time

23. Open source in LGCSB
•Pavement Management System / MapRoad
•Open Layers
•PostGres
•Open Street Map

24. Map Data
•Aerial Photography
•MapRoads Road Networks
•OpenStreeMapping
•Routes, WPIs, Road
Programmes

25. Integration of new OSi Web Services
Time slider control to view Work Programme
Items and Routes for a limited range of years
Work Programme Items by Type and by
Phase

27. The World is changing

29. What are Other Governments doing?
• The UK Government has agreed to:
• consider Open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT
procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money
basis
• only use products for interoperability that support open standards
and specifications in all future IT developments
• seek to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services.
• Reasons –
• 1. Cost Savings - Licensing Fees
• 2. Solutions vs Software
• 3. Speed to Deployment
• 4. Cost Savings - IT Investments
• 5. Open Source Standards & Security

31. Bristol City

32. Conclusions
 Can be fanatic or a zealot, but the show must go on
 A growing number of OSS Government communities across Europe
 Every migration to Open Source Software needs a change
programme and TCO to justify it
 OSS need not be an all or nothing scenario nor the universal answer
to IT future
 The higher the dependence on proprietary office productivity
software the bigger the task to move to OSS
 Need to overcome the support issue