Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: EGB Feb Seminar: E-Government and the Gershon Efficiency Review]

[Graham Seaman]

MJ Ray wrote:

> Richard wrote:
>  
>
> > someone to present a case-study of their council running
> > Free Software, and making big savings (as a byproduct, on
> > top of all the other benefits of Free Software).
> >    
>
> Yes, that would be great. I think it would be in AFFS's interest to
> support anyone doing so, as far as we can, wouldn't it?
>
> Other than the few which have appeared in the press (Nottingham?), I
> guess we should look at tricky areas like local authority web sites.
> They have a raft of technical and procedural standards to follow, more
> so now that Freedom of Information is really running.
>
> Starting from http://open.egov.org.uk/ I found details of the APLAWS
> and LGOL-Net user groups at http://www.lgolnet.org/User_Group.htm
> http://www.aplaws.org.uk/support/usergroup.php which seem a good starting
> point. I'm not near any of the places listed publicly: Camden, Coventry,
> Blaby, Fylde, Stoke-on-Trent, States of Guernsey, Newham,  Bromley and
> West Sussex CC as well as Harrow. If anyone is, can you approach that
> council, please?
>
> Can someone email both groups to see if there are updates, please?
> Please keep the list informed of progress.
>
>  
I have seen Alasdair Mangham from Camden talk about development of 
Aplaws (Camden paid for the  initial development), and he certainly 
wouldn't present it primarily as a cost-saving measure - although he 
doesn't talk about it in these terms, the advantages are primarily in 
freedom not cost. For example, like many councils, so much of their IT 
had been outsourced they had to reconstitute a project management team 
to oversee development; because they were dealing with small companies, 
rather than big suppliers like Accenture, the council needed people who 
actually understood what was going on instead of handing it all over, 
etc. So there were additional costs in employing people and in time. The 
advantages were things like the ability to pay two companies, one to 
write the code and the other to validate it, so they got better quality; 
to get feedback from other councils, again improving quality; etc. So at 
least for the original developers lowering costs was not the primary 
driver, and actually comparing costs was difficult because the money 
went on different things.

Of course this could be different for other councils adopting Aplaws as 
a more-or-less finished project, and certainly  for councils just 
migrating to free software  (ie. not web, which is always going to be 
fairly custom).  Like Bristol:

http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/PressReleaseViewer/viewer.html?pressReleaseId=236418

maybe. Anyone involved in that migration?


I have a semi-related question: my own council (Hounslow) has been in 
the local papers as being about to invest a lot in redeveloping their 
web site, so I went to look for the tenders to see if there was any way 
to bring in free software. But I can't find the tenders: certainly not 
on the EU site, not in the local papers, or anywhere else I can find. 
Isn't there a requirement on them to publish these somewhere visible?

Cheers
Graham