A continuously increasing number of public administrations adopt open source software in their IT systems. This study presents the use of the jAPS 2.0 Entando open source platform to build the Italian Civil Protection Department web portal that constitutes an interesting example of how open source technologies can be used to fulfil the legal requirements in place for public websites. The Civil Protection Department portal presents several features of interactivity and innovation that have never before been available in the Italian public administrations. The jAPS 2.0 Entando platform, maintained by Tzente, is licensed though GPL and it is hosted in the OSOR forge.
| Quick Facts | |
| Project Name | jAPS 2.0 Entando |
| Sector | eGovernment |
| Start Date | 2/2010 |
| End Date | 7/2010 |
| Objectives | A Web 2.0 platform for the Italian Civil Protection Department |
| Scope | Regional, International |
| Budget | N/A |
| Funding | Public |
| Achivements | The use of jAPS 2.0 Entando by the Civil Protection Department portal is a successful example of using open source software for the needs of public administrations that usually have to comply with additional requirements than those of other non-governmental IT systems. In this case, jAPS 2.0 Entando has shown that an adaptive and customisable portal may be implemented in line with the accessibility requirements set forth by international standards and national legislation. |
Introduction
The Civil Protection Department website of the Italian government is one of the highly visible governmental websites as it includes important information for all Italian citizens, This information regards emergencies (earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, meteorological extremities, etc.), practical information on how citizens should react and the existing reaction plans of public authorities. Taking into consideration the diversity of the information available on this portal and the need for access to all, personalisation, in terms of selection of content, multilingualism and accessibility, is one of the required and extremely important features of this portal.
The jAPS 2.0 Entando platform was the portal employed for this highly demanding case. Its development was supervised by a multidisciplinary team of experts from the Civil Protection Department. The result is a modern and easy to use portal that fulfils all legal and functional requirements one should expect of it.
The jAPS 2.0 Entando is being maintained by Tzente S.r.l. the open source company founded in response to growing demand for the platform and it is registered with OSOR.eu where it has been downloaded 1152 times.
Organisation and background
The portal was designed and developed by a consortium of Italian IT companies in strict collaboration with the Italian Civil Protection Department’s Communication Office. The consortium had the form of a temporary joint venture that included Selex Elsag, Telecom Italia, and Engineering, in the framework of the SPC (Public Connectivity System) framework contract with DigitPA (National Centre for IT in the Italian Public Administra-tion).
Transparency, personalised content and collaborative design are the three pillars on which the new Italian Civil Protection portal rests.
The mixed group of experts from the PA and the members of the consortium worked for months in close collaboration, with great enthusiasm and professionalism, throughout all project stages, from the design to the final system testing. The role played by the Depart-ment’s Communication Office was fundamental during brainstorming sessions, offering important contribution in the areas of transparency and the best possible service value for the public.
Figure 1: View of the Civil Protection Department portal
Personalised content for the new Italian Civil Protection Department portal. The site interface consists of a series of widgets containing content and headlines chosen by the website’s editors. At the present time users can personalise widgets by changing their position or closing them, but soon they will also be able to choose the subjects to view. The entire site follows Web accessibility guidelines.
The platform was chosen to organise the flow of communications into a series of flexible information streams that can be organised according to interest and need. Transparency and adaptability are the keywords in this new web project which, given its special focus on satisfying the needs of the public, is and must remain in a “perpetual beta” state
Budget and funding/Financial issues
DigitPA[1] defines the IT strategy at the government level expressed in the “Codice dell’Amministrazione Digitale” (“Digital Administration Code”, CAD) document. Article 73.2 of the CAD provides for a “Public System of Connectivity” (SPC) framework, which is defined by Italian law as “the sum of technological infrastructures and technical rules resulting to the development, sharing, integration and dissemination of information and data of the Public Administration necessary to insure the interoperability and applied cooperation of the information systems and the flow of information. All this while guaranteeing the security and privacy of the information as well as the protection and autonomy of the information of each single public administration”.
On June 12, 2007 the President of CNIPA and the CEO of Telecom Italia[2], signed a Framework Agreement (“Contratto - quadro per siti web e servizi online nella PA”) for the design, implementation and management of websites and services for government-run systems in the Public Connectivity System.
The Civil Protection Department website was developed according to this Framework Agreement and under the SPC requirements and consequently complies with the strategy defined by DigitPA at government level, and with the price criteria defined in the Framework Agreement.
The project initially mapped the site’s functional specifications, which included information architecture, wireframes and functional analysis. The development of the portal continued with the deployment of both its back- and front-office functionalities, while simultaneously, the process to migrate the content of the previous website was also initiated. Upon completion of the above tasks, a validation phase confirmed the correct operation of the new system and a training session of approximately one month concluded the project.
Technical issues
The Italian Civil Protection Department portal is based on solutions that organise the information flow in a series of adaptable and flexible streams (widgets) that can be personalised based on the preferences of the portal visitor. It is the first time an Italian public administration portal uses such a personalised user interface, thus bringing a high level of innovation to Italian Administration portals.
Another important feature that needed to be implemented in the portal was that of accessibility for all. Before the creation of this new site, adaptive interfaces were still not accessible; determination to create and support cultural and democratic innovations was demonstrated with the ability to personalise interfaces. This constituted an important right for all citizens, giving them support in order to choose and filter the content that actually interests them, without being constrained by inflexible browsing rules and layouts imposed by others.
The mixed-competences team of experts from the Department provided valuable support during review work, IT architecture definition and the design and testing of the new adaptive interfaces. In line with the provisions of SPC, the project utilised advanced collaboration tools, such as MediaWiki, Subversion, Mantis, etc. from the beginning, in order to improve workflow efficiency and to give everyone access to project documentation, with real time updates on progress.
The new portal is the result of a fascinating co-design initiative with the input from experts of multiple skills and points of view, all contributing to a collective, multi-disciplinary product with a high level of creativity. The portal is organised in sections that classify the significant amount of information in well-structured groups. Such sections include:
- the work of the Department in predicting and preventing risks;
- the publication of information on emergencies in Italy (soon to be available in an interactive section with geo-referenced information);
- an interesting new section with multimedia content;
- the presentation of new content through photographs and audio-video clips;
- an organisation chart to present the people in the administration and volunteers’ organisations.
It is quite obvious that transparency and adaptability are the keywords in this new web project which, given its special focus on satisfying the needs of the public, is and must remain in a “perpetual beta” state.
Features of jAPS 2.0 Entando
The main features of “jAPS 2.0 Entando” can be grouped in connection with its major components, which are presented below:
- The portal section supports integration through a modular architecture that simplifies integration and aggregation of information, data and services. The use of XML simplifies reuse of information across a group of federated portals. Finally, Showlets, a set of lightweight GUI elements facilitate the information and services customisation tasks of the portal managers.
- The Web Content Management System is compatible with WCAG 2.0 and other guidelines that allow people with disabilities to manage portal content easily without losing its versatility.
- Identity Management is an important component that supports authentication, authorisation and auditing of all transactions performed by the portal users. It also provides a profile manager that manages all identity management profiles (users, roles, groups, and permissions).
The general system architecture of jAPS2.0 Entando is presented in the following figure[3]. It is a multi-tier and multi-layer architecture built upon open standards and technologies that facilitate system interoperability. In such an environment, following architectural patterns such as model-view-controller (MVC) and data access object (DAO) is as easy as taking advantage of a fully featured Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Figure 1: jAPS2.0 Entando architecture
Cooperation with other public bodies
The jAPS platform has been used in other public administrations besides the Civil Protection Department portal. Examples include:
- The Portal of the Italian Ministry of Justice: The new Ministry of Justice Portal is built on jAPS 2.0. The Portal is complies with all accessibility requirements, and allows citizens and professionals to access information and services.
- Intranet Portal of the Medio Campidano Province: The intranet portal of the Province of Medio Campidano is an integrated work environment where employees and other stakeholders to access services and share information.
- The Intranet Portal of the Cagliari Municipality: The intranet of the Cagliari Municipality is a reference point for employees’ activities; a single point of access to all the applications available in the municipality.
- Intranet Portal of the Tempio Municipality: The Intranet of the Tempio Municipality is a virtual workspace with access to summarised views and personalised services complying with accessibility requirements.
- The University Hospital of Molinette in Turin: MTM-Tech has successfully used jAPS 2.0 Entando platform for the "Intramoenia" project.
Other public authorities in Italy use the same platform as well[4].
The re-use of the developed system is possible as it is foreseen by the Italian Digital Administration Code (CAD). The CAD stipulates that a public administration requiring the development of custom software to satisfy specific needs, must also ensure that the software can be re-used. This is valid in the case of new products and also when products are "adapted" (CAD Articles. 68 and 69).
The public administrations that hold application programs have an obligation to provide the source code and full documentation of the software, free of charge, to other public administrations that need it and want to adapt it to their needs, unless valid reasons exist that foresee otherwise (CAD art. 69).
The Italian Civil Protection Department used the open source platform jAPS 2.0 to build its new website supporting the integration of customised services for citizens. The same platform can be used to create tailor-made solutions in various public sector organisations (schools, hospitals etc.) and in different application scenarios (intranet, portal, vertical application etc.), since it provides features and modules to create customised applications such as the one in the case study of the portal of the Civil Protection Department.
Many of the features and modules developed for the portal of the Department can be used, partially or as a whole, by different public sector organisations. For example, one innovative feature of the Portal, the module that allows users to customise their homepage by selecting and organising items from a list of contents using all available widgets, could be also used in the portals of other public organisations.
Reusability of architecture
Being open source, the portal software allows anyone to reuse it partially or as a whole, making also possible the re-use of the system architecture. Public administrations can decide to re-use the whole system, including its information architecture and modify only its contents and some graphics (e.g., the organisation logo, use their own colour scheme etc.) or can decide to re-use only some modules and services and customise them in terms of functionalities and presentation according the specific needs of the sector, by creating vertical applications. The open architecture of the system also allows other public administrations to build additional modules around the system’s software architecture.
Evaluation
The jAPS 2.0 Entando platform presents itself as an open source alternative to classic proprietary and open source portal and content management systems. jAPS 2.0 Entando can help companies and governments to improve organisational effectiveness by facilitating information sharing, participation and collaboration in the Web 2.0 era.
jAPS 2.0 Entando has the necessary flexibility that allows easy personalisation of the platform to meet specific regulations’ needs. The platform is compatible with international accessibility standards like WCAG 2.0 and specific government laws such as Section 508, Stanca Law and PAS 78 for both front end and administration area. The platform also allows people with disabilities and reduced abilities due to aging to perceive, understand, navigate, contribute and interact with the web (no digital divide).
Achievements / Lessons learned
The procurement methodology followed in this case can be considered a lesson learned for the public procurement of IT solutions. The public authority, in this case the Civil Protection Department, followed the normal, legal procurement procedures and a consortium of three private organisations managed to win the contract and deliver a solution to the full satisfaction of their client. The fact that an OSS solution was provided did not become a reason for positive or negative discrimination.
The design stage took all preferences communicated from Italian citizens into consideration, analysing statistics regarding the sections most visited and taking on board requests and observations sent in directly via e-mail.
A site’s architecture should be oriented towards maximum accessibility and exhaustive information. A portal, in order to be truly accessible, cannot be limited to allowing use of its content by the greatest number possible of citizens, it must also promote diffusion through the tools already available that are most popular with internet users.
With this in mind, the new portal offers a series of new ideas. The use of widgets on the homepage enables total customisation, so that users can choose their own content and preferences, suiting their personal taste. The themed structure plus faceted navigation has been designed to make collocation of content logical and linear, making browsing easier. Finally, every page can be shared with the most popular networks, such as twitter and Facebook, maximising diffusion and awareness and potentially expanding the user base of the portal itself. Accessibility, use and diffusion are also made easier by the option to browse the site in English, another new entry for the new portal.
Users can register and choose one or more themed channels about which they will periodically receive e-mail updates or they can subscribe to the portal’s newsletter or RSS feed.
Information about the platform can be found through the portal newsletter and RSS feed.
Future plans
The jAPS 2.0 Entando platform is open source software backed by a lively ecosystem that supports its evolution[5]. Future plans include the release of the new product with new features by an investment of more than euro 500k.
Entando 3.0 is the next generation open source portal, with new functionalities to simplify portal use and management with a strong integration with mobile feature (apps for Android and iOS), and it is planned for 2011. Analytics is another key point of jAPS Entando evolution: on September 29th 2011, Tzente and Pentaho (www.pentaho.com) will present the integration of Portal and Business Intelligence tools in Rome. Open Data management will be part of the new platform: the aim is to promote innovation though encouraging the use and re-use of government data-sets.
Other important platform evolutions consist of augmented reality and content management integration, GIS system integration and a REST API[6] . Updated information about the roadmap of the project for 2011 and timeframes can be found on the jAPS portal.
Conclusion
The use of jAPS 2.0 Entando by the Civil Protection Department portal is a successful example of using open source software for the needs of public administrations that usually have to comply with additional requirements than those of other non-governmental IT systems. In this case, jAPS 2.0 Entando has shown that an adaptive and customisable portal may be implemented in line with the accessibility requirements set forth by international standards and national legislation.
Links
Notes
- DigitPA is responsible for the drafting of standard contracts for SPC services at a governmental level, in order to guarantee service availability, achieve coordination and ensure best contractual terms as well as the overall reliability of the services.
- Telecom Italia was representing the consortium of Telecom Italia, Elsag Datamat (now Selex Elsag) and Engineering
- http://www.japsportal.org/community/resources/cms/images/Architettura_Logica_jAPS_d0.jpg
- http://www.japsportal.com/portal/pages/en/homepage/platform/who_is_using/
- http://www.japsportal.com/portal/pages/en/homepage/content_view/?contentId=CNG513
- REST is an acronym (Representational State Transfer) that specifies a communication method between applications. API is an acronym for “Application Program Interface” that in this case denotes a specific software library used for communication with other applications.
