PloneGov (PloneGov)

An updated version of this case study taking into account the evolution of the project is available at: www.epractice.eu/en/cases/plonegov2009

More than 75 Belgian, French, Spanish and Swiss cities and regions participate in the CommunesPlone project, renamed PloneGov on 1 June 2007. In doing so, they aim to gain independence from IT service providers by developing, essentially by themselves and in a cooperative manner, applications and websites for their own use as well as for their citizens. The PloneGov strategy relies primarily on open source tools: Zope and Plone. The expected benefits of PloneGov include the enhancement of the consistency of applications in relation to user needs, the promotion of collaborative websites, the use of the most recent technologies while avoiding licence fees, and the guaranteed publication of sources with GPL.

Policy Context

PloneGov/CommunesPlone project meets in several ways EU strategic objectives on eGovernment as defined in e2010 renewed Lisbon initiative. It already reaches different layers of public administrations in five countries and is raising interest in a number of regions. CommunesPlone.org (Belgium, France) is strongly connected with two other Plone based e-government projects: UdalPlone (Basque country-Spain, France) and PloneGov.ch (Switzerland). Due to their complementarity, the 3 projects merged on June1 2007, creating an international project named “PloneGov.org”. The goal is to share efforts and existing applications between all participants. From 2 Belgian towns early 2005, Seneffe and Sambreville, CommunesPlone project rapidly spread reaching by mid 2007: 18 towns and communities in Belgium and France, 2 regional governments in Belgium, and several SME. (For details, see attachment: IDABC news, Flossimpact, PS-OSS draft). PloneGov, after merging with UdalPlone and PloneGov.ch, it includes 16 local governments from Belgium, 3 from France, 13 from Spain and 2 from Switzerland, Bern. 2 towns, from Argentina (Rosario) and Uruguay (San José) respectively act as observers. Many other towns and administrations in Belgium and France are considering joining the project. The project is very dynamic in Wallonia (Belgium) where it will reach 10% of the local governments before the end of 2007. So far, the participants themselves have financed the project, without any political or financial support from the administration in charge of local governments. It confirms the potential of economy of scale allowed by pooling human resources and software developments. The lack of budget and “political support” has been balanced by entrepreurship, openness to newcomers and collaboration. These conditions have stimulated an environment in favor of innovation and attractive to high potentials developers and SME.

Description of target users and groups

PloneGov is one of the few projects focusing on the smallest local administrations, which makes its original. In this sense, it aims at and to give anybody the opportunity to benefit from eGovernment's advantages. PloneGov / CommunesPlone is open to anybody who wishes to collaborate.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project management still relies mostly on voluntary contributions by entrepreneurs from the public sector and SME. Management is based on collaboration between the public sector, Zea Partners a non-profit international network of SME, and SME providing additional skills to the project. Zea role has been essential in PloneGov development. Beyond a daily advising activity for the technical leaders of the projects, Zea got strongly involved in the organization of the project, including the search for financing and the construction of a sustainable economic model and also communication and lobbying. The Community behind PloneGov is strongly motivated to develop the project. The enthusiasm of its members is a factor of promotion as well as the growing pool of application and services proposed to newcomers. The working method based on an open source community enables developers from the public sector (towns and regions) to work together, and to create generic tools adapted to their organization. The collaboration with SME experts in open source adds an additional value to the project in term of skills transfer. This way of working also benefits to public employees who become more efficient in their administrations.

Technology solution

All applications developed within CommunesPlone/ PloneGov are web-based and directly accessible trough a browser. As a consequence, no other additional investments are required to any group of users (inside the public administration or for the citizens). In other words, any user can access the PloneGov applications with his login and a password. Plone, an open source web content management system, is entirely compatible with WAP standards, which allows anybody not only to consult Internet sites from a mobile phone, but also to work on applications. This technology also allows interconnection between published information, electronic agendas, etc.

Technology choice: Standards-based technology, Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA), Open source software

Main results, benefits and impacts

CommunesPlone/PloneGov is build on top of a widespread avant-garde open source technology. The innovation resides in the technical practices of development but also on the original collaborative model. Collaboration and growing a community are key points of our innovative approach. Where the traditional approach induces competition between different actors, the PloneGov model, inspired by the Open Source development mechanism, promotes collaboration reuse of already implemented solution. A positive result of sharing knowledge and practices is the impact on human resources and motivation. Originally started early 2005 by individuals from the public sector in two small towns, Seneffe and Sambreville (Belgium), PloneGov is a project resulting from the roots, answering practical and pragmatic needs. Thanks to this bottom-top approach, PloneGov suits perfectly the user’s expectations. To solve the problem of lack of human resources, budget and expertise, the leaders worked closely with an international network of SME (Zea Partners) and local SME. The benefits of involving SME are the transfer of expertise and the international dissemination of the project. On the other hand, thanks to the absence of a formal action plans usually drafted by large administrative bodies, PloneGov enjoys enough flexibility to adapt to opportunities. It can easily innovate and evolves in an organic way. For example, new developments become a priority when an agreement has been reached among participants (towns IT experts) about functionalities, budget and required human resources. An iterative approach also characterizes the project: new ideas are worthwhile trying and shared with others. The benefits of involving IT experts from several towns result in producing more generic solutions adapted to the users needs.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

The project innovative aspects are attracting the specialized press and researchers. The project has reached over 40 public administrations. A first expression of interest for collaboration has been received on June 10 by the "Africa e-Parliaments Action Plan" project of UNDESA. This project aims to bring eGov solutions to six African parliaments, and would be interested to share tools with PloneGov. “Unlike what is often thought, the conception of a open source project doesn’t necessarily attract external contributors”. To prevent this risk, a good relationship has to be established with the open source community. Zea Partners, an international network of SME, played an important role in establishing trustful relationships between local governments and the Plone Community. Many concrete actions facilitated this process, such as giving numerous talks throughout Europe and also the USA or Latin America, or organizing the first international Plone eGovernment workshop in Belgium. There are many links between PloneGov project and Plone community. The developers (public and private) regularly participate in joined activities (sprints, workshops, meetings) organized by the community. Thanks to the community also, the skills available in each of the participating towns and regions can be combined and optimized. Some towns will provide developers, others, communicators or designers. All participate in the project according to their skills and bring their cultural background to the project.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Benefits of a close collaboration between public sector, OS community and SME Plonegov is the base of the development of an innovative economic ecosystem including several actors as local governments, SME and an open source community. Together with SME, the community assumes part of the initial investment in term of free promotion, community events to build up confidence, coaching, transfer of knowledge, etc. Local governments on their part open a new, potentially important market to SME. Lesson 2 - A good knowledge of existing solutions avoids the duplication of efforts. By pooling efforts, the technical coordination enables a better use of resources; reduce costs and speeds up results. The potential to attract new towns is big because over 100,000 EU towns and regions nearly all have the same needs. Lesson 3 – The difficulty to develop an innovative approach within the public sector. The open source software model of development is new and often misunderstood. A risk would be to under evaluate the work required to sustain and manage a growing mutualisation project. Some activities as coordination, information, training, etc. should ideally be taken in charge by a central body. A bottom-up project may raise concearns within the traditional top-down administrative structure.

Scope: International, Local (city or municipality), National, Regional (sub-national)