This document provides an overview of a webinar on bringing open source software to government agencies. It introduces the speakers and discusses how the New York State Senate adopted an open source content management system (Drupal) to build its website. This allowed the Senate to avoid license fees, collaborate with other government entities, and release code and data to the public. The benefits of open source discussed include cost savings, innovation, reduced vendor lock-in, and leveraging community-built software.

1. How and Why to Bring
Open Source to Your Agency
February 24, 2011
Brought to you by:

2. Today’s Speakers
Steve Ressler
President and Founder
GovLoop
Andrew Hoppin
Former CIO NY State Senate
Partner, New Amsterdam Ideas
John Scott
Steering Committee Member
Open Source for America
Gunnar Hellekson
Chief Technology Strategist
Red Hat Public Sector Group

3. Housekeeping
• Twitter Hash Tag: #gltrain
• At any time during the next hour, if you would like to
submit a question, just look for the "Ask a question"
console. The presenters will field your questions at the
end.
• If you have any technical difficulties during the
Webinar, click on the Help button located below the
slide window and you’ll receive technical assistance.
• And finally, after this session is complete, we will be e-
mailing you a link to the archived version of this
Webinar, so you can view it again or share it with a
colleague and a GovLoop training certificate.

4. Doing More With Le$$:
Open-Source in New York State Government
Andrew Hoppin
NY State Senate CIO 1/09-1/11
@ahoppin

5. Challenge at NYS Senate in 2009:
Government 1.965, not Government 2.00x
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

7. News “Clips” ($1.5MM/year)
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

8. Constituent Relationship Management
(CRM)
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

9. Senate.State.NY.US
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

10. Better Laws, Government
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/ $
Less

11. Why An Open-Source CMS?
• Needed a true CMS
– hundreds of content creators on staff
• Preference for Open-Source
– avoid license fees
– choice of consultants
– ability to bring development in-house
• Comfort with Open-Source
– range of mature platforms in use by large enterprise
– availability of professional support
• Ability to Collaborate with Government Peers
– Share code, roadmap, etc.

12. Why Drupal?
• Considered Joomla, Django, Drupal and Wordpress
• Selected Drupal based on:
– widespread use in public sector (gov’t & NGOs)
– module feature set for constituent use cases
– local availability of PHP/MySQL talent
– maturity of consultant and developer community
– trajectory of the platform since 2004

13. Development Process
• Contracted outside consulting firm for
– requirements gathering
– design
– coding
– hosting
• *During* external development, hired
– one in-house developer
– one project manager
– existing in-house staff for training & QA
• Deployed 3.5 months after project start
– one programmer
– one project manager
– leveraged in-house staff for training
– hundreds of bugs and features implemented since

14. NYSenate.gov
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

15. Microsites for Senators
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

16. Microsites for Committees
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

17. Open Administrative Data

18. Calendars

19. Committee Events
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

20. …Content to the Cloud
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

21. NYSenate.gov
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

22. Open Legislative Data

23. News 2.0

24. New CRM
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

25. NY Senate Mobile
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

26. Releasing Our Code on GitHub
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

27. Open-Source Distinctions
• Software Stack on which we build and host applications
• Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Java, Android, Xen, etc.
•Tools We Use to Support Building Applications:
• Git / Subversion, Redmine / Trac / Bugzilla, Eclipse IDE, etc.
•New Applications We Build and Release as Open-Source:
• e.g.: NYSenate Open Legislation, SAGE Geo Web Service
•Open-Source Platforms We Leverage, Customize and Extend
• e.g.: Drupal, MediaWiki, Wordpress, CiviCRM, GeoServer

28. Open Standards, Formats, APIs for
Interoperability, Shared Services
• e.g.: XML, JSON, .ODF, .JPG, .CSV, RDF
• e.g.: SOAP, REST APIs
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

29. …Open APIs, Open Standards
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

30. OPEN Data

31. Open-Source Software
for Collaboration & Cost Savings
“More and more we are seeing the federal government move towards open source
due to its increased security, reduced procurement times, large scalability...reduced
cost to the taxpayers, and escape from vendor lock-in…
Open source will just continue to grow as the world moves to open storage (low-
cost hardware with open-source storage management software that makes it
perform as well as high-cost proprietary storage devices), open network (low-cost
hardware with open-source VoIP, routing, and switching software that make it
perform as well as high-cost proprietary network devices) and open-source
virtualization (xVM and Xen cloud computing without the cost of proprietary
virtualization and management software)
-Bill Vass, COO Sun Microsystems Federal, former CTO US Pentagon

32. Recent Press
•CIO Magazine: “The Recession will lead CIO’s
to move to open source”
•eWeek: “10 things IT organizations will do
during the recession… #1 Move to Open
Source”
•Government Computer News: Defense
Appropriations language advocates a move to
Open Source”

33. Social Web Adoption
Socialize It:
CapitolCamp II, August ‘10
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

34. Rationale
•Cost Savings (no license fees)
•Innovation (leverage community-built software)
•Speed to Deployment (reduced procurement times,
clone product a peer has created, etc.)
•No Vendor Lock-In (hire anyone to work on it)
•Recruit Talent (top developers like to work with F/OSS)
•Leverage Tax Dollars (share our code to benefit
others)
•Security: see the source code, fix bugs yourself
•Supported: Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Acquia, Kitware, etc.

35. Social Web Adoption
Collaborate Across Virtual Geographies
……
Federal
Missouri
California
Vermont
Indiana
NYSenate
Judiciary Executive
Assembly
Citizens
Civil Servants
Elected Officials Rochester
Businesses Troy
NYC
Interest Groups
http://flickr.com/photos/rocketqueen/1573565705/

36. Followup
Twitter.com/ahoppin
Twitter.com/NYSenateCIO
NYSenate.gov/department/cio
Hoppin@Senate.State.NY.US
Ciodesk@Senate.State.NY.US

37. How & Why to bring Open Source to
Your Agency
John Scott, RadiantBlue Technologies, Inc.
jscott@radiantblue.com
jms3rd@gmail.com
@johnmscott
February 24, 2011

38. Open Source:
Freedom (and Control)
Enjoy to Savings
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 38

39. UNCLASSIFIED
Software becomes a Commodity
Ref: Commodification of Industrial Software: A Case for Open Source, July/August 2009 IEEE Software
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc. Proprietary
www.RadiantBlue.com
UNCLASSIFIED
39
25 February 2011

40. UNCLASSIFIED
Example Savings
Source: OSDL, Stuart Cohen, GOSCON 2007
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc. Proprietary
40 www.RadiantBlue.com
UNCLASSIFIED
40
25 February 2011

41. 41

42. Gartner predicts that within 2010 25% of the overall software market will be Free Software-based, with roughly 12%
of it “internal” to companies and administrations that adopt Free Software. The remaining market, still substantial, is
based on several different business models, that monetize the software using different strategies. Gartner Group,
“Open source going mainstream,” 2006
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 42

43. RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 43

44. Open Open Gov
DoD: Clarifying Guidance Regarding
Open Source Software16 October 2009
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 44

45. OSFA Reportcard
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 45

46. RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 46

47. Military & Openness
Problem Opportunity
• DoD „hostage‟ to legacy, proprietary • Agility
components  Faster development
Time is a significant driver –  Faster deployment: need to have
sometimes forced to „re-engineer‟ impact during fight
the solution created decades ago  Better transition
• Interoperability issues: Services, • Decrease likelihood for vendor lock-in
commands and systems
• Potentially lower costs
• Greater interoperability
• Increasing complexity of code • Knowledge capture
• We develop code that isn‟t readily
accessible or reusable
• Communities around capabilities
• Software process model
• Development/maintenance costs
outweigh COTS costs
• Timely delivery of new solutions
• Keeping up with innovation/change
25 February 2011 “The OODA loop for software deployment must decrease”
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
47
47

48. RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 48

49. www.Mil-OSS.org
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 49

50. Open Source Option
Open source software implementations creates
options for the government:
• Don’t have to be locked into single technology
vendor with forced license requirements (per
seat, CPU, etc. )
• Open source can be a powerful negotiating point
with vendors to decrease costs
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 50

51. Backup
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 51

52. RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
25 February 2011 52

53. Open Source Strategy for Governments
Freedom may not be free,
but it's totally worth it.
Gunnar Hellekson
Chief Technology Strategist, Red Hat US Public Sector
gunnar.hellekson@redhat.com · 202 507 9027 · @ghelleks
24 February 2011

55. Three Phases
Use.
Participate.
Create.

56. Red Hat's Packaging Problem

58. Use.

59. Participate.

60. Create.

61. Use.

62. Open Source = Commercial Software
It's special, but it's not that special.
In most cases, the existing procurement rules are fine:
It must fulfill your needs.
You need support.
You need an exit strategy.
Someone is in charge.
Open source must win in a fair fight.
http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss/licenses

63. The Support Question
Don't assume proprietary advantages.
You will always have support when you need it.
If you report a bug, it will always be fixed promptly.
That company will always be in business.
They will never change their business model.
They will always support the product.
The original developer will always work here.
You will always have great documentation.
– Deb Bryant, OSU Open Source Lab

64. The Support Question
Be aware of open source advantages.
You can always pay for support when you need it.
If you find a bug, it can be fixed.
You don't rely on one company.
You don't worry about new business models.
You don't need the original developer.
Open standards make integration easier.

65. The Support Question
Self-support?
Who will support unsupported software?
What risks are you willing to assume?
When will you require a support contract?
Who says yes?

66. Review the Licenses.
What terms are you willing to accept?
http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss/licenses

67. OMB
http://www.cio.gov/documents/Technology-Neutrality.pdf
“...evaluation processes that promote
procurement choices based on performance and
value, and free of preconceived preferences
based on how the teclmology is developed,
licensed or distributed... This allows the
Government to pursue the best strategy to meet
its particular needs.”
“Technology Neutrailty Memo”

68. SF
http://www.sfgov.org/site/coit_page.asp?id=115978
“The Software Evaluation Policy will require
departments to consider open source
alternatives, when available, on an equal basis
to commercial software, as these may reduce
cost and speed the time needed to bring
software applications to production.”

69. Participate.

70. How Can I Participate?
“Who's in charge here?”
Can staff participate on lists?
Can they use their work email?
Who can submit bug reports?
Who can submit feature requests?
What does an endorsement look
like?
Image: "Working together..."
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4424552903/) used under the
Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0 license, image from lollyman's
photostream

71. SCAP.

72. Create.

73. How Can We Release Code?
Pitching in.
Who decides what will be open source?
When does it make sense?
What license will you use?
What kind of review process is necessary?
Who's involved in the review?
Who's the maintainer?
Where do I track what's been opened?
Image: "Lego Construction Worker"
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/wannawork/2098315714
/) used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-
2.0 license, image from wannawork's photostream

74. DOD
http://cio-nii.defense.gov/docs/OpenSourceInDoD.pdf

77. YOU ARE HERE

78. Audience Q&A

79. Today’s Speakers
Steve Ressler
President and Founder
GovLoop
Andrew Hoppin
Former CIO NY State Senate
Partner, New Amsterdam Ideas
John Scott
Steering Committee Member
Open Source for America
Gunnar Hellekson
Chief Technology Strategist
Red Hat Public Sector Group

80. Thank You!
To continue the discussion visit the
Open Source Software in Government
Group on GovLoop at:
http://www.govloop.com/group/OSSinGov