The source code for the Pléiade eGovernment services platform, a case management system that is used by hundreds of municipalities in the Vendée (France), has been made available as open source. The software was developed by e-Collectivités Vendée.
By making the software public, the e-Collectivités Vendée association hopes that other public administrations will contribute to the project. In the Vendée, a department in France’s Pays-de-la-Loire coastal region, the Pléiade platform lets public administrations switch to an electronic workflow.
Pléiade (PLateforme d'Echanges Informatiques et d'ADministration Electronique) is the initiative of the Maison des Communes, a services organisation created by local administrations in the Vendée department. The Pléiade collaborative web-based services are used by 213 municipalities and 133 municipal services organisations. Since 2014, the system has handled 73,000 official acts, 60,000 budget forms and 2500 procurement requests.
The solution relies on many open source components and web-applications running on Linux servers. The interface is provided by content management system Drupal and combines a handful of document management tools including document management system Alfresco, and the closely-related electronic signature solution iParapheur, file transmission system FileZ, S²LOW, which verifies and validates documents, and enterprise service bus Pastell.
User login and authentications are managed by OpenLDAP and central authentication service Cas.
All together now
Work started in 2011, with an inventory of eGovernment needs and a feasibility study. The first version of the platform was up and running in 2013. Since 2014, provisioning, maintenance, and future development of the platform have been the responsibility of e-Collectivités Vendée.
Pléiade was presented at the Adullact Congress 2016 held in Montpellier on 24 June.