Newport News, Virginia Goes Open Source
Recently, the Newport News, Virginia Open eGov system was released. Using the Plone content management system, the system is designed for governments to install, out of the box, a website which also includes specialized departmental infrastructure. Newport News has also made the system available under the GPL; it can be found here.
I found this quotation from their Lessons Learned document interesting: “The adoption of new technology is an iterative process of innovation and learning…” While they did not use the actual term, it seems that the team which developed Open eGov utilized an agile approach to software development. Agile development does not mean a harem scarem approach to development; the team said that they spent a significant amount of time conducting research on best practices and content management systems before undergoing the customization necessary to launch Open eGov.
We are interested to see if this product gains traction. It is part of the PloneGov project, which, while claiming members in 20 countries, does not have an apparent member list, or much reach. I think that if the Newport News staff wants to extend their reach for the product, they’ll need to answer some questions:
- How can they increase citizen participation in these sites? I see surveys, but there is no way to comment
- How to spread the word about the availability of this product? The product is, from appearances, targeted at local governments.
- Is the Plone/Python/Zope package the best one to facilitate widespread adoption? The community of developers is much smaller than of other developers. Naturally, Scott Stults, our resident Plone and Python expert, believes it’s the right answer and could be seen dancing with joy when shown the Newport News announcement.
- Why not put the project into a system that allows user contribution to it? How a developer contributes to the Open eGov project is not particularly clear. Perhaps this is an intentional result of the lack of desire to be the gatekeepers of others’ contributed code.
Seeing Open eGov is certainly, to us, a positive development. Now, we’ll see what happens next. Building a great open source platform is just one part of the puzzle; developing a vibrant open source community is another kettle of fish.
Thanks to our friend James Walker at EzGov Europe for pointing this article out to me!
Tags: newport news, newport news open egov, open egov, open goverment, open source, plone, python, zope
June 19th, 2008 at 8:36 am
I am part of the eGov team that developed this product and can address some of the points raised by this article.
Citizens have numerous ways to comment on the site with the easiest way being the website feedback form. The form captures the url of the page the user submitted the feedback from to make it easier to address any comments they may have. Also the feedback form feeds into a ticket tracking system (free from plone.org).
Your are correct the target audience of the product is other local governments but plone itself has been adopted by several countries making it very widely used.
Plone/Python/Zope has developers worldwide which makes it very easy to go online anytime of the day or night and chat about any aspect of development or enhancement requests. We find the Plone/Python/Zope community to be very enthusiastic and can be likened to the linux community and the speed at which they addressed issues.
We welcome developer contributions, that is the one of the purposes of having a collaborative community. Parts of the package we offer are products developed by the Plone community and integrated.
We have discussed with other localities releasing the intranet version of our government package. This package is geared more toward internal use.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:14 am
In regards to ‘there is no way to comment’, there is a portlet (bottom left) that shows on virtually every page with a link to Submit Web Site Feedback, which has been used in the 15 months since going live to submit over 1200 comments to report problems and make general comments (mostly positive) about the site.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
In regards to ‘How can they increase citizen participation in these sites?’, we are actively pursuing making as many services as possible available through the web so that citizens don’t have to come to a city office to conduct business with the city so often.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:44 am
We intend to ‘put the project into a system that allows user contribution to it’ as suggested … just haven’t gotten that set up yet! This is one of the major reasons for our interest in such a project. We are currently using subversion for our developers to manage updates to it and will at some point (hopefully in the near future) make that available for update by outsiders.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
@ Danny and Sam– First off, thanks for doing what you’ve done. I think that you’ve gone where few people have gone before, or, if they have, they haven’t talked about it.
With regard to commenting/submitting feedback, it’s certainly possible that I overlooked a simple way to provide feedback, for if you’ve received > 1,200 comments, someone (many someones) has figured it out. Pardon my oversight.
With regard to my Python/Plone/Zope question, I’m not questioning the existence or dedication of the community (watching Scott Stults drool at the mere mention of the word Python in a non-snake context is all the proof I need), but the approach taken in determining that it was the right platform. I’m interested in the thought process that led to the decision.
I hope that this gets legs and gains adoption. It seems like from Sam’s answers that the plans are in place, and I should be patient! I shall, and appreciate the feedback and discussion from both of you!