Government
Louvre using Drupal
Big news! The world's most visited art museum in the world is now using Drupal for its website: http://louvre.fr. Très cool!
White House releases source code for IT Dashboard
Vivek Kundra just released the Drupal software code for the ITDashboard.gov tool, which is built on Drupal by REI Systems. You can find the source code at http://www.cio.gov/tools/. More information can be found in a blog post by Alex Howards from O'Reilly Radar: White House releases IT Dashboard as open source code.
This is important for Drupal and Open Source: the U.S. Government, one of the largest IT buyers and users in the world, has just taken another big step in embracing Open Source and becoming an active contributor. It also enables us, the Open Source community, to help the U.S. Government enhance ITDashboard.gov or to recommend it to our respective governments all around the world. Very cool!
Investor.gov using Drupal
Investor.gov recently switched to Drupal from WordPress. The site houses a lot of information for investors.
The new investor.gov is a good looking site that also seems to be 508 compliant (for accessibility). The site is easy to use, making it easy for users to get the information they need without being overwhelmed.
All in all, the site is great example of how governments can leverage Drupal to create beautiful and accessible sites. Nice work SEC!
SBA.gov using Drupal
Another U.S. government agency switched to Drupal. This time, it is the U.S. Small Business Administration. As part of their mission to ensure that small business owners and entrepreneurs have access to accurate, timely and helpful information, the SBA relaunched their website in Drupal. Check it out at SBA.gov.
The site was built by Promet Source and DRT Strategies (DRT).
Basque Parliament using Drupal
The Basque Parliament has recently replaced a portion of its older site with a new Drupal site that can be seen at http://www.parlamentovasco.euskolegebiltzarra.org.
This continues the trend of various government bodies around the world using Open Source software -- and especially Drupal to power their official websites.
The website was developed in cooperation with several Drupal companies, including Bilbomática, Serikat and Ibermática.
U.S. House of Representatives using Drupal
The United States House of Representatives has become the latest large government organization to transition their web presence to Drupal, and in a really big way. Currently the House hosts approximately 520 unique websites on a mix of over a dozen proprietary and open source content management platforms, and soon they'll all be powered by Drupal. When the House went looking for a platform to standardize their web presence on, they chose Drupal because it met their requirements to:
- Accommodate hundreds of independent websites, each with different sets of features.
- Provide the ability to deploy new sites quickly and efficiently.
- Enable House Members to use the web designer or developer of their choice by leveraging the Drupal community.
The House worked with a number of Drupal experts for this project, including Acquia, Phase2 Technology and Ingalls Information Security. The team developed, validated, and delivered the Drupal 7 platform that will be used by both individual House Member sites and Committee sites. Here are some examples of recently deployed sites (a complete list can be found at http://house.gov/house/news.shtml): http://sewell.house.gov, http://hanabusa.house.gov/, http://womack.house.gov/.
With the deployment of the House Drupal platform, the Chief Administrative Office (CAO) of the House of Representatives is soliciting Drupal development firms who wish to be vetted for an Approved Vendors List. These approved vendors may then be called on by various Representative offices and Committees (the End Customers). During the next phase of the project, End Customers will look to engage vendors to create custom websites on the House Drupal platform. These vendors can range from small to large firms and may provide services such as visual design, Drupal theming, custom module development, or other related services that the House may need. Each End Customer will have the authority to independently hire approved vendors to develop on top of the House's new Drupal platform.
The CAO will be accepting submissions to qualify vendors on an ongoing basis and is requesting an initial group of submissions by January 28th. If you are interested in being on the qualified vendor list, then please download this document for more information.
The intent of creating the list of qualified vendors is to make it easy for elected officials and other offices within the House to connect with vendors when they are in need of services. With the new House Drupal platform in production, and the freshmen class of the 112th Congress arriving in Washington this past week, there will be plenty of opportunities for qualified vendors.
Open Government 2010 conference
Tomorrow, I'll be presenting at a Open Government 2010 conference organized by FEDICT and the Flemish E-government team. While I'm only in the pre-conference program (rightly so), the main conference sports some impressive speakers: Herman Van Rompuy (President of the European Council), Neelie Kroes (European Commissioner for Digital Agenda), Vivek Kundra (Chief Information Officer of the United States), etc.
The pre-conference is linked to the “Citadel Statement” a call-to-action for Europe and its Member States. The Citadel Statement identifies five core areas where European and national decision makers can provide tangible support to improve local e-government. Here is a summary:
- Common architecture, shared services and standards: Incorporate EU best practices into a common service delivery architecture (information, process and application-layer) that provides one common language and helps local governments share services and learn from other 'best practices' such as how to work with authentic registrations, how to create personalized access to services, etc.
- Open data, transparency and personal rights: Show a commitment to making public data open and accessible by establishing a well maintained repository of definitions and taxonomies that makes data consistent throughout Europe.
- Citizen participation and involvement: Demonstrate political leadership and courage to improve the democratic process and facilitate citizen participation in decision-making across Europe. Promote the value of co-designing services in conjunction with citizens as a first step in making government more people-focused. Provide guidelines, training and methodologies on involving citizens in decision making and service design.
- Privacy and identification of individuals: Create a robust political and policy framework to address common privacy issues across Europe associated with personal data. Provide protocols that enable the easy identification of individuals over the Internet and facilitate mobility by developing shared standards for the identification of people that makes it easier to travel and do business all over Europe.
- Rural inclusion: Promote the concept of Broadband as a public utility that - like electricity and water - should be available to all communities no matter how small or geographically dispersed. Equality of access is an important precondition for the growth of superfast broadband - an economic necessity in today’s growing marketplace.
While the path to Open Government will be a long, I really hope that Europe will get this right. I'm sure it will be a journey with many challenges, many beyond picking website technology. That said, I do believe this is a great fit for Open Source and an area where Drupal can help make a difference.
