The Greek government’s main website (gov.gr) is run using mainly open source software frameworks, say IT project managers involved in the overhaul of the central gov.gr web portal in March this year.
The new gov.gr has been developed using two software collections: Django (Python) and Vue (Javascript). The portal combines these with applications written in Python for mining the web server resources, and the React and Angular web application development utilities to create web sites.
The new portal runs on Linux virtual machines, the Nginx web server and OpenResty, a modification of Nginx. It also uses the MariaDB and PostgreSQL relational database management systems, and the Varnish HTTP cache.
These are all commonly used tools for similar web sites and web services, Thodoris Papadopoulos told the European Commission’s Open Source Observatory: “We did not reinvent the wheel.”
Infrastructure as a service
The Greek government now also offers its public services infrastracture as a service, entitled Okeanos (“Ocean”). This cloud service is provisioned entirely using open source software: the Synnefo (“Cloud”) Python cloud stack.
Okeanos draws its resources from GRNET data centres across Greece, the design and development of cloud technologies in Greece and the design of the Greek government cloud, G-Cloud, which started up in 2010. These initiatives were led by Nectarios Koziris, Professor of Computer Science at the National Technical University of Athens. Okeanos has run since 2012 on the Synnefo platform, which was developed by Professor Koziris’s team.
More information:
About the GRNET cloud computing service
Government Data Centre memorandum (in Greek)
Government cloud memorandum (in Greek)
Government cloud blog post (in Greek)
Synnefo open source cloud stack