At GovLoop.com, the knowledge network for government, we are passionate about highlighting the bright spots in government and helping to improve it. That’s why I am excited to share our most recent GovLoop Guide, focused on open source technology.
All across government we’ve have seen the shift from proprietary software to open source as a way to meet complex public sector missions. We found some fascinating insights as to how 223 members of our government audience are leveraging open source.
We’re all aware that adopting open source technology provides a great opportunity for government. Our survey first explored the benefits of open source software. Seventy one percent of respondents indicated that the main benefits from open source are resource management and cost control. Additional key findings showed:
70 percent stated improved efficiency and productivity as a main open source benefit
70 percent have leveraged the open source community for software improvements
61 percent highlighted the ease of information exchange through use of open source technology
54 percent noted the ability to build once and replicate with open source software
Our government audience identified many different reasons why they are using open source. One respondent cited education as a leading benefit, noting, “Open source educates users for greater problem solving.” For many in government, open source has opened the door for increased training and staff development for government agencies. Another participant stated, “Open source builds the skills and expertise of your staff.”
Survey participants also shared the notion that open source allows agencies to control costs so they are not at the mercy of software vendors for upgrades. Nor do they have to deal with proprietary vendor’s legacy solutions, making the agency more agile. “Open source enables lower cost solutions and innovation,” said one respondent. Finally, respondents were in consensus that when done correctly, open source leads to co-development of knowledge and collaboration among stakeholders.
The percentages and data are fun to look at, but what I really love is looking at the qualitative data we get from our GovLoop surveys. We design our surveys to give us a representation of our audience and allow us to focus our research to meet the needs of our readers, providing deeper context from the government community. These qualitative answers really allow us to help government agencies tell their story.
We had a few trends stand out, but the one I’d like to focus on is the trend of using open source to modernize and create compelling websites. Respondents provided many examples of websites that have been powered by open source software. One example came from an employee from the City of Austin, Texas, who noted, “Austintexas.gov is the City of Austin’s official website, and is built using Drupal.” Other examples of websites powered by Drupal include the White House and FEMA, as one consultant said in the survey, “We are using Drupal and WordPress for many State agency websites.”
Respondents also provided specific examples from the federal government’s use of open source software. One example comes from Data.gov, the warehouse of federal data and one of President Obama’s signature open government initiatives. “Data.gov runs entirely on open source. We started out on Drupal and now we are moving to WordPress. Our data catalog is CKAN (headed by the open knowledge foundation). We put all our custom development in GitHub. Our open data interchange format (data.json) is crowd sourced via project open data. We run on Linux and use open source databases like MySQL and PostGreSQL,” said one federal government employee. Respondents also mentioned using open source technology like WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal for web development projects.
As with any kind of information technology initiative or program, government agencies must consider the mission value, and understand the costs, risks and opportunities when adopting open source. We have created this report to cut through the hype and clarify how open source can transform your agency to prepare it for the future. The report also includes:
An interview with Chris Mattmann, senior computer scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern California.
An interview with Gunnar Hellekson, chief technology strategist at Red Hat’s U.S. public-sector business.
Insights on how open source will affect government in the next three to five years.
A public sector open source cheat sheet
Now is the time for organizations to consider new and innovative approaches to IT. The bottom line: open source offers a bright spot in government innovation and can help launch agencies into the future.