Open Source in Irish local government

Grudaire

One of the threads in the politics forum refers to the fact that Limerick has moved towards open source.

I hadn't realised that this was the case : http://www.limerickcity.ie/IT/OpenSource/

More info on Open Source in local government : http://www.lgma.ie/en/what-we-do/ict-business-services/open-source-practice-centre

I know Fingal have started 'opening' up the data they have: http://data.fingal.ie/

Just wondering if there are any other moves towards open source in Irish local government? And it would be interesting to see any figures/how successful the moves have been!

croo

I was at a open source conference in 2011 where the Limerick (and I had thought Waterford too but could have been mistaken) managers presented their projects re migration to linux. They had already migrated some servers, at least, and were then looking at what might be achieved on the desktops.

I haven't heard much since however.
If there is an update I too would be interested in hearing more.

Grudaire

Well I doubt anything will be heard before these elections are over!

expectationlost

many of them use sugar crm http://irishdev.com/Home/News/1664-Provident-CRM-Helps-State-Agency.html SugarCRM runs the household charge system and the Local Government Management Agency

http://demo.annertech.com/portfolio/localgovie

FixYourStreet.ie too

Grudaire

Is http://www.sugarcrm.com/ open source?

No mention that it is on the website?

PrzemoF

Grudaire wrote: »

Is http://www.sugarcrm.com/ open source?

No mention that it is on the website?

Looks like dual licensing:
http://www.sugarcrm.com/download

croo

Yeah, it's that quasi open source. Good for marketing and becoming more and more common, unfortunately.
Sometimes it can be difficult to find the actual code! But at least sugarcrm was always that way, from day one. My preference was always for the vTigerCRM but they too are pushing the saas service heavily and while the code for all functionality is available their web sites have changed over the years such that the big "press here to begin" type buttons lead to paid services rather than the code. But as I say at least all the code is available - with sugar you get the basics but much functionality, which I would think was basic, is only available on the paid version.

I'm amazed it's used as a billing system as it is quite minimal - perhaps it's heavily customized?

Johnboy1951

Community edition of SugarCRM used, at least for this project ......

Open Source CRM

The implementation of a CRM to manage the customer interface for the Household Charge project has facilitated the efficient management of the customer interface through Email, Calls and Letters.

The Household Charge was a high profile national project which went live on January 1st 2012. SugarCRM Community Edition was utilised as the customer management service for this project. It successfully managed all email, calls and correspondence received in the HC Bureau.

It provides automated workflows, issue assignment and resolution tracking. Daily statistics and reports were provided for a very high pressure environment.

The implementation of SugarCRM for the Household Charge project has been utilised for the Protect our Water project and the NPPR project providing significant savings on licencing and development costs.

http://www.lgma.ie/en/what-we-do/ict-business-services/open-source-practice-centre

croo

It successfully managed all email, calls and correspondence received in the HC Bureau.

It provides automated workflows, issue assignment and resolution tracking. Daily statistics and reports were provided for a very high pressure environment

Ok, I can see it doing all this okay - when I read "billing system" I was thinking, scheduled invoicing and all the management of debtors accounts type functionality (Aging, Dunning, maybe Bank Rec etc).

It's great to hear that this is happening!

Grudaire

It seems like open source has been embraced by local goverment to a limited extent which is a far better situation that I thought!

It's probably as well that this is flying under the radar because there hasn't been an open backlash from Microsoft!

Johnboy1951

Grudaire wrote: »

It seems like open source has been embraced by local goverment to a limited extent which is a far better situation that I thought!

It's probably as well that this is flying under the radar because there hasn't been an open backlash from Microsoft!

It is the unknown/unseen backlash from MS that would worry me most

Manach

Slightly tangential, but a interesting read on Open Data and how it has been used in the civil sector to bring benefits to the public: "Beyond Transparency: Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation"

oscarBravo

Manach wrote: »

Slightly tangential, but a interesting read on Open Data and how it has been used in the civil sector to bring benefits to the public: "Beyond Transparency: Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation"

Link? It's a topic that interests me.

Manach

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Transparency-Future-Civic-Innovation/dp/0615889085/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401189988&sr=1-2&keywords=open+data

Offhand, it has interesting articles on how open public data is used in transport, education and tracking where money goes in elections. Mostly US case studies but there was a section relating to London's usage.

azzeretti

Microsoft might have caused this in more ways than one. A few years back MS changed their agreement with all the local authorities and revoked the volume license agreement they had, costing the county councils a lot of money.

Limericks City started moving to open source a fair few years ago but when the City and County merged the new county manager wasn't as keen and things have slowed somewhat.

I work with almost all the local authorities and while it's not that unusual to hear of some open source products being used they're still a long way off I think.

maccored

massively far off as far as Laois is concerned. There's one open source app on the intranet running a meeting room booking system that was set up years ago (and has been running flawlessly on a linux server ever since), but that's about it. There doesnt seem to be any interest up the line either about moving to open source, even though a lot of the software created over the past few years are IE only and seem to fall to pieces under newer versions of IE. It's ridiculous.

Grudaire

Interestingly there are mumbling in Munich now, and potential for moves towards reversing away from Open Source are possible..

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/new-leadership-challenges-munichs-open-source-strategy

"The use of open source is also disputed by one of the new deputy mayors, Josef Schmid (CSU). On Tuesday, the German IT news site Heise quoted him as saying that the workstations running open source are missing numerous basic functionalities. The solutions are also incompatible with systems used outside the administration. He says it is unacceptable that it takes weeks to get his smart phone configured for use with the city's email. According to him, politicians, engineers and architects working for the city should be able to communicate with the rest of the world on a technically level playing field."

Goes to show politics do matter

PrzemoF

1. Missing unknown basic functionalitioes.. how common to say something is missing without any hint what's missing.
2. Incompatibility is always fault of closed proprietary systems
3. I'm wondering what kind of problem was really with the smart pohone? Windows phone not allowing to use IMAP or something?

He has no clue about "a technically level playing field". The field is skewed for so long that is seems to be "level" for some people.

Microsoft has tons of money to put some pressure on key people - we'll see it a lot when MS will have nothing to lose, but money.

croo

Those new mayor & deputy have been complaining since at least Feb 14 - I read a (German) report back then. Reading this latest article the reported problems seem very strange - cannot get email! How hard could that be? In other news there are rumours that MS are talking about moving their (German) HQ to Munich and directly elected mayors need jobs!

croo

I just discovered this on wikipedia

"In February 2014, SugarCRM announced that they would no longer be releasing new open source versions of their Community Edition application and this would now be a bug fix only application.[2]"

And the link to which is referenced (by [2]]) points to this announcement from sugarCRM.