FLOSS Impact (Economic Impact of FLOSS one innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector

The European Union counts more than 100.000 cities and communes whose majority have neither the budgetary resources nor the term resources of competences to set up a project of e-government. All however are confronted with the same types of needs, with the same difficulties. It is this report which is at the base of the CommunesPlone project, a project which has the ambition to touch more than 10% of the cities and Walloon communes before the end 2007.

The CommunesPlone project aims at the development of data-processing applications by and for the local communities. Initiated in 2004 by the common Belgians of Sambreville and Seneffe, the project offers the possibility to the cities and communes, by the mutualisation of their human and material means, to find a greater technological independence and to build tools truly adapted to their needs.

The number of partners implied in the CommunesPlone project does not cease increasing. Started from a group of some Walloon communes supported by the UVCW (Union of the cities and Walloon communes) and Zea Partners, the project largely extended until touching the Flanders and France. Cities and communes of Spain, Switzerland and Argentina announced their interest and evaluates the advisability of also taking part they in the project. Drawing its force from its opening, CommunesPlone sets up collaborations with provinces, areas or Parliaments.

Based on an open CMS source, Plone, CommunesPlone took as a starting point the the methods of developments of the open communities source. The project in addition gathers SME resulting from ten different countries, in Europe, in Africa and Latin America.

Today, of many applications were finalized or are in the course of finalization by the various partners.

Thanks to CommunesPlone, even the smallest local authorities are capable to reduce their costs of operation, to improve their working methods and their effectiveness and to benefit from advanced from e-government while jumping the numerical fracture.

In 2004, the commune of Sambreville carried out a market research to make the best technological choice within the framework of the deployment of an Internet site like for the development of new applications.

The conclusions of the study were without call. The software owners, in addition to their prohibitory cost, did not answer the functional objectives and of integration of the administration. Only a free software as Plone could satisfy these criteria, the prerequisite being implementation a progressive in close cooperation with the community.

The stopped choice, an Internet site standard Plone was put on line and a business application of the meetings of the communal college was developed.

2004, it is also the year when the commune of Seneffe launches its first site in Plone. A choice guided by the will of a greater autonomy as well as decentralized management of Internet site. Thus since 2004, each communal service manages its pages on the communal site. Persons in charge for associations as of the tradesmen cross also the step. The impact of this new management which allows all one each one to adapt the techniques of setting on line and thus contributes to a better actualization of information is immediate. The statistics of consultation are in constant evolution. In three years, the number of visitor is 8 times more important (16000 visitors during ego of February).

The two communes are convinced of the potential of mutualisation of such a technology. It is necessary to stop working each one in its corner

A contact between those led to the organization of meetings which associates the respective partners (Zea Partners, Bubblenet, ISIPS). Thus is born Communesplone.

Quickly of new communes and new partners join the project. Communesplone counts today about fifteen common Belgians. Several products such as the téléservices, the authentification by Eid, Co-marking, communal Internet site one considering the day. Moreover, thanks to supports UVCW, the project has a mutualized waiter dedicated to the project.

A good comprehension of the model of open development source and factors which generate the added value are necessary to structure a project while holding account of its economic potential.

An open software source is a software which gives to any person who has of it a copy the right to use it, to study it, to modify it and to redistribute it.

Where is the added value of the open projects source?

Mutualisation of the developments and re-use of existing developments

· A good knowledge of the developments in hand makes it possible to avoid reinventing the wheel. This technical coordination makes it possible in many cases to re-use the equivalent of years of development, reduced the costs and accelerates the production of results.

Pooling of human resources

· The exchange to know to make, reciprocal formation and complementarity of competences. To increase the human resources requires the regular realization of collective activities aiming at exchanging the knowledge to make and open the experiment with the new participants.

Quality of integration

· An integration of quality and generic request an in-depth knowledge of the software. To carry out a good integration takes time and requests of the high level expertise. This investment is profitable because it reduces the nongeneric quantity of code to maintain and facilitates the migrations of the software.

Opening to international collaboration and scale factor

· Of many local authorities has very similar needs. Collaboration with other areas opens an important potential of economy of scale and the possibility of reaching financings. To develop a project requires to take a care particular to the communication and the circulation of information of quality.

To take an active part at the Community is a profitable investment

· The report/ratio Flossimpact (economic impact of the free software in Europe - wwwflossimpact.eu) highlights that the active participation has an open community source brings a competitive advantage to the people and implied organizations. This added value is beneficial as much for SME offering of the services based on the code that for the users by reducing their maintenance and development costs.

The CommunesPlone project is registered for several reasons among the strategic objectives of the European Union as regards e-government defined by the i2010 initiative [1].

No citizens left behind - not to leave any citizen to the back

- 100.000 cities and areas: The European Union represents a gigantic whole of almost 500 million inhabitants gathered in 100.000 cities and areas. CommunesPlone is one of the rare projects which is addressed firstly to these small local authorities and which makes it possible to them to return on one level in the numerical era, to bring the benefits, in particular economic there, of the e-gov. At the end of 2007, 10% of the Walloon communes will have already adhered to the project.

- E-inclusion: The project is likely, by its implication near the territorial, known communities for their proximity with the citizens, to reinforce to a significant degree E-inclusion [2].

Making efficiency and effectiveness in public services has reality - To make effectiveness of the public services a reality

- Effectiveness: Thanks to CommunesPlone, the small local authorities are capable to reduce their costs of operation, to improve their working methods and their effectiveness.

- Partner of the open communities source: The developers of territorial communities implied in the CommunesPlone project are in close interaction with the open communities source. This interaction is an important factor of innovation, effectiveness and dissemination.

- International: CommunesPlone is a project open to the international collaboration which, essentially, transcends the borders:

O The initial partners have any interest so that the project acquires an international dimension and grows rich by the experiments of each one. Indeed, more the contributors will be many, taller will be the return on investment than they will be able to hope.

O Nothing is opposed to this internationalization. Indeed, the operating mode of the local authorities, contrary to that of the states, does not differ basically from one country to another. The procedures of Flemish Gemeente raad are finally almost identical to those of a French Town council or German Gemeinderat.

O The technicians of the project may find it very beneficial to keep up to date with what it occurs beyond their borders. Indeed, various developments undertaken by other projects can doubtless be re-used but that implies to be able to pass the physical and psychological borders in order to go to the meeting of these other projects. This opportunity, the technicians of CommunesPlone included/understood it well.

- Logic of “bottom up”: CommunesPlone exceeds the borders but also passes beyond the hierarchies which generally divide the various levels of capacities. Nothing is opposed so that the project which is mainly intended today for the small local authorities do not extend to other levels of capacities. Regional governments and their Parliaments, provinces thus contacted the managers of the project to evaluate feasibility to adapt certain applications to their own services.

Strenghtening participation and democratic decision making - To reinforce the participative democracy

- Participative Democracy: The tools provided by CommunesPlone make it possible the communities to support on their territory culture of a healthy and durable participative democracy by the means of the e-democracy. Indeed, they are from now on capable to diffuse completely and on line the meetings of the communal council, the official reports of different the meetings, the agendas, of launching forums accessible to the population, ensuring the promotion of the advisory councils, etc Internet remains and will remain an essential bond between a community and its citizens.

- Numerical Fracture: The CommunesPlone project begins in the fight against the numerical fracture in Europe and beyond:

O The CommunesPlone project offers the possibility to the multiple trade, companies, schools, associations, etc located on the territory of the participating communities to have a Web page gathered under a URL commune. The technical infrastructure indeed makes it possible to create without any particular technical skill a new page, to update it by adding texts and images to it, to with it to hold a diary, etc in order to fight the numerical fracture directly and to support the promotion and the activity of the economic and associative life local.

O Via the North-South co-operations established by the cities and areas, CommunesPlone has the possibility of fighting the numerical fracture which is likely to still reinforce the economic inequalities separating the companies industrialized from the emergent economies. The infrastructure developed by CommunesPlone can indeed be adapted and installed with the profit of the communities of these countries without fresh aucuns of licence.

Implementing high impact key services - To develop tools with high potential

- Electronic Indentity card: CommunesPlone takes into account the concepts of e-privacy and e-security. Right from the start project, its technicians integrated the functionalities offered by the new Belgian electronic indentity cards. The e-ID makes it possible to completely make safe the personal connections but also data which could be collected on the users. The e-ID allows an Internet ethics use as regards respect of the private life.

The innovating character of the CommunesPlone project is confirmed by attraction that it exerts on the media and the researchers of European Union:

- IDABC - OSOR [3]: The famous open platform source of the European Commission devoted as of June 2006 an article to the CommunesPlone project, ensuring an international dimension de facto to him.

- FLOSS Impact [4]: This study, financed by the European Commission, praises CommunesPlone: “The project has attracted interest in several EU countries and abroad, and highlights the potential of innovation FLOSS public edge provide to administration. Its impact is unusual in terms of opportunity for innovation, standardization and economy of scale while gaining independence from broad IT providers.”

- PS-OSS [5]: Study PS-OSS is interested in the potential impact on the development of the company of information if the authorities made their developments open. The report/ratio in particular underlines the opening of the project: “Commercial CommunesPlone is intended to integrate more and more municipalities and partners across Europe”. Besides the project constitutes according to authors' of the report/ratio a new model innovating of open development source. This model of “externalised pooling” aims to save costs, of mutualiser the experiments and to gain independence

Many projects are in hand in the field of the e-gov. Among the members of Zea, divided in 14 country, several of them have activities in the e-gov. Let us quote for example:

- PloneGov is a Swiss project of e-government carried out by the towns of Basle and Bern. The objective of the leaders of the project is to extend to other communes. This project has important developments, in particular as regards electronic management of documentation, which could be mainly re-used by the developers of CommunesPlone and to thus save an invaluable time to them. http://www.plonegov.ch

- Codesyntax based in Spain. This SME is expert in the bilingual services Spanish Basque/already provided to services to about fifteen local authorities Basques. http://www.codesyntax.com

- Menttes based in Argentina which produced a turn to present CommunesPlone at localities of the Country and is in contact with a town of 1M inhabitants who develops projects on Plone. Menttes is an important pole of dissemination by its key position in the user group Plone Conosur (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay). http://www.menttes.com

- Upfront Systems based in South Africa which works for the moment on a project for African Parliaments. http://www.bungeni.org

Bungeni - Parliamentary System Information, is year end-to-end continuation of applications that address the growing and challenging demands of increasing the efficiency of parliamentary activities and At the same time make Parliaments more open and accessible to citizens, virtually allowing them “inside the Parliament” gold Bungeni, the Kiswahili Word for “inside Parliament”.

Upfront Systems also has an important experiment of collaboration with the local authorities, in particular in a series of project related to the stock management of water.

The CommunesPlone project is built on a vast software, Plone. It is about a project centered on the creation of one of the best open CMS source and stressing the democratic aspect (equal opportunity, méritocratie), on the style (attractivity, facilitated use), on the adaptability (personalization of the types of contents, possibility of addition of many modules). From an organisational point of view, Plone has strong experience in the professional consultance; numbers its developers working for small companies of integration.

Plone is to 100% open source. All the elements which return in its construction are entirely free and compatible with licence LPG. The programming language Python is generally recognized like one of the most productive environments and most professional for the important organizations. That made already 9 years that Zope carries out the market of the waiters of open application source with the recognition many awards. Plone was established as for him as being the open CMS leader source and like one of the products, open source or commercial, among most solid.

CommunesPlone aims at adapting Plone to the specific needs for the communes. Various modules were developed with this intention:

Communal college - Town meeting management

- Objective: Management of the meetings, and the official report agendas of the communal colleges

- Nobody of contact: Joel LAMBILLOTTE, Commune of Sambreville

Co-marking - Cobranding

- Objective: To post on a site contents emitted by the Gate of the Walloon Area

- Nobody of contact: Gauthier BASTIEN, Commune of Sambreville

Container of application - container Application

- Objective: This product is intended to adapt standard a Plone authority with an aim of simplifying the user interface and of parameterizing this authority to accomodate there applications (Teleservices, College,…)

- Nobody of contact: Stephan GUEULETTE, UCVW

Descriptive extension - Extended subscription form

- Objective: This product makes it possible to extend the descriptive one of a user connected by adding basic descriptive fields (addresses, name, first name,…)

- Nobody of contact: Stephan GUEULETTE, UCVW

Identification by electronic indentity card (BelgianEid AuthPlugin)

- Objective: To give the possibility to the members of a site Plone (and even Zope) of being identified using the electronic indentity card.

- Nobody of contact: Stephan GUEULETTE, UCVW

Management of the administrative fines (under development) - Fine management system

- Objective: Management of the Communal Administrative Sanctions

- Nobody of contact: Jean DUMONT, Commune of Fléron

PloneDelib

- Objective: Tool for dematerialization of the management and the storage of the deliberations (agendas, account-returned, attendance sheets and the appendices, validation of the deliberations and the meetings by stages of workflow, etc)

- Nobody of contact: Thierry BENITA, At-Real

Open python Document

- Objective: pod has library that allows to easily generate documents whose content is dynamic.

- Contact person: Gaetan DELANNAY, EasiWal

Téléservices - Online services

- Objective: Management of Téléservices communal: application Internet

- Nobody of contact: Joel LAMBILLOTTE, Commune of Sambreville

Websites

- Objective: Basic structure of a communal website including/understanding all the useful applications

- Nobody of contact: Olivier SNICKERS, Commune of Seneffe

The CMS Plone makes it possible to put on line a communal Internet site with all the awaited functionalities (decentralized management of the pages, management of the photographs, tool of survey, tool of géo localization, forum, remote loading of files, search engine,…).

However, a site Plone “out of the box” necessarily does not answer waitings which one could have for a communal site as well from a graphic point of view as from the point of view of navigation.

To allow communes which discover this technology to quickly put the foot at the clamp, Communesplone designed a product Internet site directed communal site. The product includes/understands an interface which makes it possible to modify several properties of the site (color, images).

It includes/understands a navigation as well as a graphics by topic. A recasting of the header of the site to post the logo on the left as well as a banner illustrating the part consulted on the right. The banner can thus change according to the consulted pages.

Five communes whose town of Seneffe currently use this product thanks to which a communal site of quality can thus be put on line in a few weeks.

• AC Andenne
• AC Anderlues
• CPAS Anderlues
• Town hall of Arles (2006)
• AC Assess
• AC Chatelet
• AC Fléron
• AC Floreffe (2006)
• AC Fountain-The Bishop (2007)
• AC The Heather
• AC Morlanwelz
• AC Orp-Jauche
• AC Sambreville (2004)
• CPAS Sambreville
• Savigny-on-Barley town hall
• AC Schoten
• AC Seneffe (2004)
• AC Trooz
• AC Aimed

The cell E-common of the Union of the Cities and Communes has like mission of supporting the technological development of the communes for the improvement of the services to the citizens and the companies.

The work of the cell E-common is articulated in four axes:

- Information and sensitizing of the communes out of data-processing matter;

- Assistance and councils with the communes in their TIC projects;

- Defense of the interests of the communes out of data-processing matter aurpès of the capacities regional, federal and European;

- Installation of an environment allowing the mutualisation of the computer use in local government projects.

International federation of SME, Zea Partners positions like an actor of reference of Plone technology. Zea Partners account today 22 innovating SME resulting from 14 country and 4 continents and does not cease extending its network.

The missions of Zea Partners are:

1. The promotion of technology Zope and Plone
2. The development of the network of contractors taking an active part in the development of this software or offering services which use it
3. The realization of projects allowing to finance the development of the network and technology to the profit of the very whole community

Concretely, Zea Partners plays an important part of communication and promotion of the free software and Plone. Association is implied daily in an activity of positive lobbying near the companies but also of the authorities.

Its action in particular made it possible Zea Partners to be recognized at the European level like a “innovative business model” and to be integrated in important research projects of the Sixth outline programme of the European Union on the quality and the economic viability of the free software (QUALOSS, Flossmetrics and Calibre).

Zea offers its expertise and its knowledge on the world of the free software to the service of the companies and the authorities which would wish to start a reflexion on their information policy.

Zea is implied voluntarily in the CommunesPlone project since its origin. Its roles were multiple: connections with SME and the communities of developers, national and international dissemination of the results, development of a structure of management durable, etc

The presence of Zea Partners was a factor of success of the CommunesPlone project. Present as of the first steps, Zea in collaboration with Bubblenet, Belgian SME of its network, provided a regular support for the implied communes. Their competences in management and project management, their knowledge of the communities and the industrial sector, of the working methods specific to the developers of open software source allowed the fast development of the project.

In addition to Bubblenet, two partners of Zea also imply themselves in the development of the project: Menttes in South America and AtRéal in France.

7.3.1. Bubblenet (Belgium)

Bubblenet is Belgian SME established with Leuwen-the-New. Godefroid VAULT, its CEO, was strongly implied in the CommunesPlone project as of its origin.

Godefroid VAULT is an active member of the community “free software” Plone and Zope. Its thorough knowledge of these technologies and its active participation with the leaders of the Plone/Zope world makes it possible to ensure that the developments carried out within the framework of this project will be in phase with those of the community free software. It is also one of the engines of this community in Belgium. It took part in the launching of the user group Plone.be and assumed a key role in the starting of the project of CommunesPlone mutualisation by ensuring the transfer of competences necessary for the development of collaboratif software.

7.3.2. Affinitic (Belgium)

Affinitic has Young Belgian consulting company. Diversity of competencies with the insurance to cuts specialists in their domains are leaves of our strength. Affinitic benefits from using, deploying and developing high-quality, proven Web based open source products such have Zope, Zope 3 and Plone. Affinitic is pushing for training thesis technologies in universities, training centers and end users companies.

Affinitic work also one Zope and Flash related products because we are convinced that it' S the perfect framework for highly interactive and e-learning solutions.

Our combination of expertise encompasses project analysis, core developments, server management, training, graphical design and graphical integration.

7.3.3. At-Real (France)

atReal is a service company of software free particularly active Frenchwoman in the field of the Free Software. Specialist Zope and Plone and in the local communities, atReal proposes services of development, maintenance, assistance and transfer of competences. atReal took part in several creations of free software for the communities and tries to federate the actors between them.

Thierry Benita, manager of atReal and member of the Plone Foundation, thus integrated CommunesPlone and allowed the town halls of Savigny-on-Barley, Arles and Istres to join the already existing actors.

A first mutualisation was thus born and develops with a new free software of management of the deliberations: PloneDeliberation.

7.3.4. Menttes (Argentinian)

Menttes provides training, consulting; Web sites, portals, extranets, Intranets and custom Web application development with Plone, Zope and Python. Thesis services are provided for end-users companies and consulting firms located in Southamerica, North America and Worlwide.

Two South American cities examine possibility to join CommunesPlone. Thanks to Menttes!

• The systems of management of contents (CMS) are software used to assist the users in the process of management of contents. A CMS facilitates the organization, the control and the publication of important quantities of documents or contents. A CMS facilitates the collaborative creation of documents.
• Plone is a system of management of contents which is simple to set up, to update and to modify. It was conceived to be functional for the companies and is ideal like Intranet, waiter extranet, like system of publication of Web documents or like tool of mutualisation for collaboration between separate local entities.
• Zope is a waiter of Web application specialized in the managers of contents, Intranets and personalized Web applications. Zope is written in Python and can count on a broad community of active developers in the whole world to which many companies are added.