Open Source Best Practices in the Public Sector

Deborah Bryant Public Sector Communities Manager

OSU Open Source Lab

Charleston, South Carolina December 5, 2008

Special Emphasis on Law Enforcement

A short list of participants included representation from: •  Department of Homeland Security offices of

–  Policy - Emergency Preparedness and Response - Private Sector

•  National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center - Southeast

•  Los Angeles County, California Sheriff’s Department •  Open Source Software Institutive •  Oregon State University Open Source Lab The meeting was hosted by the South Carolina Research Authority

The following presentation was created for a meeting of law enforcement agency personnel gathered to explore the success and further possibilities for the LEADR project, an outstanding example of interagency collaboration for the purpose of exchanging information.

Note from the presenter

•  Perspective •  Prevailing model for Open Source Development

in government •  Case studies nutshell •  Best Practices •  Lessons learned

The 15 minute agenda Today’s Discussion

•  A term distinguishing open source software development

of broad interest such as… –  Linux operating system or –  Apache web server

•  From software of shared interest by a narrower community of interest for their use such as –  LEADRS for law enforcement –  Sakai course management for higher education –  OpenVista for hospital management

Coined by Brad Wheeler, CIO Indiana U. Community Source Model

The short list Case studies nutshell

• LEADR • NCOMS • Capsit • Sakai • Health Atlas Ireland • PloveGov communities

•  Formal Governance •  Neutral third party organization •  Well-formed rationale/ROI for each participant •  Strong leadership

–  Including champion in all organizations •  Some Face to face meetings •  Vendor support / participation in one form or another

–  Development services –  Systems Integration –  Skill set / training –  But CUSTOMER/USERS drives the train

Every successful project includes Best Practices

•  Project started with existing code •  Project started with a small core group •  High degree of trust among the members

–  Most likely have worked on other projects before •  Grew the community after first code release •  Moves fast, releases code often •  All best practices for project management apply

Contributing to success More best practices

•  Open Standards + Open Source = Interoperability. •  Strong industry associations exist that create natural

partnerships •  Local entities are resource constrained and will consider

no-cost / low-cost solutions •  The benefit of information sharing is well worth the

journey to get there.

Law Enforcement Project Attractors

•  Loss of leadership –  Retirement –  Job change or refocus of priorities

•  Lack of communications –  Lack of outreach / marketing –  Insufficient face to face time to overcome project

challenges •  Value by way of code releases too slow to meet

stakeholder needs •  Obvious - loss of funding, but most typically precipitated

by bullets one and two.

Top Project Killers

•  Multi-jurisdictional / multi state projects (the consortium)

should consider shared procurement to be out of scope –  Disparate states with varying procurement rules are

challenged to come land on a single contract vehicle that meets all of their statutory obligations

–  Instead focus on Intellectual property, business and technology requirements and standards; not services procurement

NCOMS Lesson Learned

•  Q&A •  Discussion items from group? •  Possible discussion:

–  What might the LEADR program do to increase its use? –  What help could DHS offer to support marketing its project? –  What other existing project could be adopted to this model? –  What standards exist that could be levered? What standards are

needed to make the project viable? –  Can DHS prescribe policy requiring new projects be done in a

collaborative manner?

The other 45 minutes agenda Today’s Discussion

•  The Open Source Lab •  The Government Open Source Conference •  National Corrections Offender Management System

(NCOMS) •  Capsit OpenRMS •  Health Atlas Ireland •  Armada •  Warwickshire Police •  Online Police Station (Italy)

For further exploration Supplemental Material

OSU Open Source Lab •  Hosts and supports approximately 35

significant open source projects including •  Linux Foundation Infrastructure •  Linux Kernal •  Apache Foundation Infrastructure •  Drupal content management

system •  Instrumental to Mozilla’s Firefox

support and distribution for three years •  25 million unique visitors a day •  Approximately 20 professional staff

and students •  Operates within administrative

computing (non-academic) providing unique, first-class industry view

www.osuosl.org

Government Open Source Conference Now in its fifth year, the permanent GOSCON archive site contains presentation materials from industry luminaries and government management experts. Produced by OSL Pubic Sector Program as a key public-private sector platform for collaboration, education.

www.goscon.org

National Consortium for Offender Management System (NCOMS)

Members: Alaska

Idaho Montana Missouri

South Carolina Tennessee

Colorado Kansas

New Mexico Oregon

Texas Utah

Formed in 2003 as a grass roots coalition of State Correctional Agencies organized for the purpose of developing, maintaining, and enhancing a comprehensive offender management system based on “Open Source” technology and standards. The goal of this system is to be able to track all aspects of offender incarceration, supervision, and rehabilitation from a single application.

www.ncoms.us

State & Local: Capsit

www.capsit.org

Capsit’s original seed funding from the US Justice Department grant for interoperable data, created OpenRMS, currently working to identify a sustainable model.

Int’l: Health Atlas Ireland Current: • Health Atlas Ireland is an open source application developed to bring health related datasets, statistical tools and GIS together in a web environment to add value to existing health data. The application enables controlled access to maps, data and analyses for service planning and delivery, major incident response, epidemiology and research to improve the health of patients and the population. Health Atlas Ireland is built upon open source software allowing it to capitalize on worldwide expertise without software licensing cost. • The purpose of the system is to help answer questions related to health events, emergency response, health services and demographics, initially in the Republic of Ireland and eventually worldwide as related to Irish Health Services. www.epractice.eu/cases/healthatlas

Int’l: Health Atlas Ireland New modules under development • Emergency Response (plume modeling for dangerous substances etc), identifying addresses and population under threat - • residential and non residential alerts etc • Road Safety (identify blackspots, highlight initiatives such as speed cameras, allow query of accident data) • Crime and Incident data query and reporting by the public • Resource Planning - similar to Health Service Resource • Planning - catchments, locations, event data, statistics etc.. www.openapp.ie/sections/projects/health-atlas-ireland

Int’l: Armada information sharing

www.armadagroupinc.com/solutions.htm

Located in Belfast, Ireland, in the US they are collaborating with Ohio counties.

Int’l: Regional Interagency Portal

plone.net/buzz/kent-connects-project-makes-final-four-in-innovation-awards

The Kent Connects project is enabling the transformation of Kent's public services through technology. With a membership comprised of all the Kent and Medway authorities, Kent Police, and Kent Fire & Rescue Service, Kent Connects is a powerful county wide alliance of public service providers.

International: Warwickshire Police

www.warwickshire.police.uk/

Project Description at: http://www.zeapartners.org/Members/netsight/warwickshire-police-force

International: Online Police Station Sidebar: epractice.eu is an rich resource of case studies for both proprietary and open source software projects in government. OSL plans to launch a US equivalent focused on OSS in Q1 2009.

www.epractice.eu/cases/olps

LEADR

Initiated as a county collaboration, the LEADR system is now in use by the states of South Carolina and Tennessee, with over 250 agencies additional agencies adopting LEADR. This cost-effective open source based software is now freely available to all law enforcement agencies. Key capabilities include data sharing, web-based records management and gang data collection and reporting. statefusioncenter.com/leadr_at_a_glance.shtml

for further information contact:

Deborah Bryant Public Sector Communities Manager

Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSL)

deborah@ousosl.org 971.533.8050

OSL: www.osuosl.org

Government Open Source Conference: www.goscon.org