PloneGov within and beyond EU

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The success of PloneGov

PloneGov is the largest open source project in the Region. In fact it is the only truly OS with processes similar to the OS community. CommunesPlone reaches now 41 local governments (15% of total), mostly interested by the “out box website” application. The number of participants has increased by more than 100% in 2007. PloneMeeting, an assembly management application, has raised interest from towns to governments. In 2008, about 10 organizations could start using it, including 2 Regional assemblies.

Plone is one of the best known Free Software Content Management Systems (CMS) in the market. Much of the importance of Plone lies in its power and flexibility, enabling it to be applied in a wide variety of contexts.

This maturity was no more obvious than during the "PloneGov" developer sprint at last year's Plone Conference. PloneGov is about bringing Plone to local government organisations. However, the focus is not on the technology. Instead, the key aim of the project is to support collaboration between local governments, the Open Source developer community and small to medium enterprises (SME) that support deployment. This said, some of the technical work going into PloneGov is also very interesting

Governmental need on the market

What can we learn from this experience?

-eGov is a huge market: 1000's of towns, with similar needs in all countries.

What is PloneGov?

CommunesPlone originated as an initiative to promote software cooperation between local governments in Belgium. Since its start in 2005, it has grown rapidly, with now 26 members. Organised like a FLOSS community, the group develops applications in the Plone. Taking this idea to the international level, the PloneGov project, started in June 2007, brings together 55 public bodies on four continents to produce Plone-based software that fits their needs.

Going beyond the borders of the Wallon region, the first Flemish town became involved with CommunesPlone in mid-2006, as well as two French municipalities. At this point Xavier Heymans, CEO of Zea Partners, pushed for an internationalisation of the project and contacted Zea members in different countries.

The key event for international collaboration came with the first Plone e-government workshop, which took place in Brussels on May 30 and June 1, 2007. Public sector workers and SMEs from many countries got together to find out, what kind of software already existed, what collaborations are possible, and how to avoid duplicating effort. They created PloneGov as an international community for Plone-based e-government tools.

CommunesPlone is one of the members of PloneGov, which by now reaches 55 public organisations in 15 countries. Through PloneGov, CommunesPlone is cooperating with other initiatives in Europe, such as Plonegov.ch in Switzerland or UdalPlone in the Basque Country, Spain: "The needs were much the same for all European regions, but there was no coordination between these initiatives. Through this cooperation, everybody can re-use existing code, and put their effort into developing new applications. There are big economics of scale for all of them", says Heymans.

What has been optained so fare?

Management and marketing: Zea Partners

Zea Partners, a network of SMEs working with Plone and Zope, is coordinating PloneGov, currently on a pro bono basis. It handles the strategic and international aspects of PloneGov, as well as marketing and communications. Zea Partners' network of SMEs has been key to the international growth of the PloneGov project. However, Zea Partners' work for PloneGov is currently not funded. Heymans leaves little doubt that this question will soon need to be addressed.

He agrees with Joel Lambillotte, IT manager of the Belgian town of Sambreville, that the international growth of the PloneGov network is driven by SMEs working with Plone. "The public sector's mission is local government. It's not in their mission to develop collaboration with other countries. Through the Zea Partners network, we are 14 countries in four continents", says Heymans. By participating in the PloneGov project, SMEs can more easily reach the market. "We get a lot of interest from SMEs. They see a huge business opportunity here", says Heymans.

PloneGov as a brand

"By now, Plone Gov has become a brand", says Heymans. "If an SME talks about PloneGov as a project that's already reaching 55 public organisations in 15 countries, it is much easier for them than starting from scratch. The project is gaining momentum." The PloneGov brand also makes it easier for those promoting PloneGov to get support for the project from politicians. A prestigious award for PloneGov surely hasn't hurt: In June 2007, PloneGov received the Lutèce d'Or, a French award for the most innovative e-government project based on free software.

Future challenges: Growth and structure

Both CommunesPlone and PloneGov want to grow. PloneGov is trying to reach more countries, and set up more successful collaborations between them. It seeks to connect people who already have a strong base of Plone applications and are active in the sector. This is why Zea Partners is working to bring several eGovernment projects under the PloneGov umbrella.

CommunesPlone and PloneGov: Success built on cooperation

PloneGov, in its turn, is a young project with great promise. Notably, the push towards international cooperation comes from SMEs pursuing their own business interests, rather than from public bodies, which might just see such activities as an additional task they may not consider essential. Yet it is easy to see for public bodies that there is added value for them in joining the network: A living community, tailor-made applications at lower cost, and a push to the local economy. It is precisely this constellation of individual interests that is likely to make PloneGov sustainable and successful in the long term.

Both CommunesPlone and PloneGov profit from their close ties to the Plone community. This large, established group provides them with models for their way of working. Heymans predicts that as PloneGov grows, the ties to the Plone community will become even stronger.

Alhough the project has a high potential and a positive impact for the Plone/Zope ecosystem, there is no possibility to fund Zea work being this effort. Zea work consisting in management, strategy, communication, networking and events. There is a big potential to spread this experience, "but we lack the resources to achieve our goals", Heymanns concludes.