The project "Communesplone", born in June 2005 particularly on the initiative of Sambreville and Seneffe hosts currently a dozen "communes" (municipalities) (with the contribution of Andenne, Anderlues, Châtelet, Fléron, La Bruyère, Morlanwelz, Schoten, Trooz and Visé).

The objective is to create computer applications (web sites, business applications) adapted to the needs of the communes and in close cooperation with them.

Historical background

A municipality offers a broad range of activities: public works, health, teaching, organisation of various events, document issuance, filing…

All these activities being connected in a way or another, their computerisation requires necessarily major consistency.

In order to ensure a judicious choice of these technologies, a part of the resources of the municipality computer service is dedicated to the technological survey, the other being dedicated to the development of management applications.

The computerisation of the public services in recent years has known a deep change as a result of the appearance of efficient tools making it possible to improve internal management (traceability of the administrative files, etc.) or the exchanges with the citizen (teleservices – municipality services online-, etc.).

Not having sufficient resources in terms of financial resources and competences, we evaluated the various solutions proposed by the market. At the time, we did not have particular preference for open source or owner software.

Of course we turned ourselves to the usual suppliers of the municipalities.

Two essential elements appeared quickly:

• the functional needs of the administration were not completely met by proprietary software

• These suppliers badly controlled open source software.

To continue our investigations in open source, we have therefore decided to evaluate ourselves this technology by fixing our own criteria (functional perimeter, interoperability, performances, etc.). Even if we were sure of the justification of the choice of the Plone solution (clarity of the python code allowing to work in equip, tools making it possible to accelerate developments, etc.), launching out into the adventure without experiment seemed too risky to us. Having taken note that there was a Belgian antenna of the community, we then went to one of their meetings in November 2004 to the royal Museum of central Africa. It is at the end of this meeting that we became aware of the potential of this solution.

What is so original?

• A combination of local resources in order to meet various needs for computerisation.

• Independence with regard to the computer suppliers.

• Technology and operating mode modelled on that of an “open source” community.

The resource combination.

This project is above all the result of collaboration between persons sharing the same values: team spirit, desire to acquire new competences and to share them, improve the public services.

Independence with respect to the computer suppliers.

The lack of collaboration between the municipalities and the usual suppliers involves certain frustration:

- The municipality computer expert is unable to improve the software sometimes acquired at major expense while it has know-how.

- These software not answering to standard of interoperability (it means that they are not designed to interact among themselves), the cohabitation of a series of this software within communal information technology often induces certain cacophony.

Encouraging the suppliers to solve these problems by imposing strict rules (technical and collaboration methods) will make it possible to recover the control of communal information technology.

One of the large assets of CommunesPlone is collaboration with the ASBL ZeaParners (in the past Zope Europe). This organisation allows federate about twenty European SMEs around Plone technology in helping them to benefit from markets which they could not have reached separately.

The know-how being extended to several actors, we have no fear to build partnerships with different actors, as long as they satisfy the objective criteria of entry (2-year expertise in the field, etc.).

Currently we function with three SMEs including one in France (Marseille).

This European extent also concerns our infrastructure, because if the production server is located in Brussels, GPL sources are hosted in France, to the ADULLACT (a french association that helps french administrations to

work together on free software projects).

The operating mode modelled on that of an “open source” community.

To impose rules on the others, they must beforehand be applied to ourselves.

This requires a certain degree of professionalism and experience that few municipalities can gain.

It is therefore essential to call on independent specialists (objective opinions). The community Plone – which developed the technology that we use – met our expectations. This situation was in particular encouraged by the presence of a very active Belgian antenna and by its diversity (Royal Museum of central Africa, royal Museum of the Natural science, FUNDP, Ghent University, some SMEs and ASBLs).

We then established a close contact with Plone.be and thereafter with other initiatives as the PLIP (free and informal Divisions around Plone), groups of users Plone set up by the FUNDP.

We have thanks to this aid / experience of the community set up a structure - a focal point (basic cell) based on the persons most involved in the project (Sambreville/Seneffe, UVCW), a team of application developers, a team of system administrators (from which each member signs a charter urging them not to reveal certain information) and an operating mode allowing us to launch out into the trade software and Internet site conception meeting strict standards.

This involves in particular:

• The organisation of training in order to align the communal computer experts' skills.

• The organisation of work sessions between developers: to transfer knowledge (par programming), but also to avoid dependence with regard to only one computer expert for one software.
  For example, we currently organise approximately each week a working day between three developers in order to work out in common the "teleservices" module. For the eID module, we had assembled a developer Plone, a developer Apache and a developer controlling the eID. According to one of these developers:

"It resulted from there really productive work, each one bringing its competences in the development and the realisation of the module. That allowed to advance quickly and much more rapidly than if each one had carried out its part individually. Moreover, the control of realisation is directly acquired by the participants. The information flow is direct. Each developer widens his knowledge thanks to the contribution of the others and feels strongly involved in realisation. This represents a very stimulating working method and perhaps too much, since it was difficult to stop at the end of the day and we even continued certain investigations at home: -).

The highlighted social aspect must not be forgotten either. Collaboration around the same work makes it possible to become better acquainted with the other developers and to create or strengthen human links"

• The setting-up of a collaborative infrastructure: a Community web site, forums, the centralisation of the source code.

• The application of quality standards via obligatory tests of the products carried out.

What are the concrete results?

We immediately encouraged the modular approach, allowing the members of communeplone to perform a “à la carte” selection according to their needs and priorities.

The latter enter obviously in account so as to fix the modules to be developed and their planning. To avoid that one launches out into too many projects – which would not end for lack of time or of resources -, it is the "focal point" which takes the final decision.

The modules currently carried out are as follows:

• The dynamic web site comprising in particular an adaptable graphic chart and a content management (Seneffe, Sambreville, Anderlues).

• The municipal College's management (Sambreville): Submission of points by the communal services, generation of the agenda and of the minutes, traceability of the points.

• Teleservices (Seneffe): order of administrative documents via the web site.

• The commercial directory (Anderlues): database containing the information concerning trade with the possibility for the latter of modifying them on-line.

• The eID module making it possible to ensure the access security to the web and intranet sites.

• The Co-marking module: technique which makes it possible to connect to a local document contents emitted by a distant source (in our case, the Portal of the Walloon Region)

These modules are already used by certain cities and in test for others. They are being finalised.

Moreover, in order to reduce maintenance work (safety, migrations) and to reduce the operation costs, we developed a common secure infrastructure lodging the web communal sites as well as application s trade. It is currently financed by the Union of the Cities and Municipalities of Wallonia until January 2007. Each member of CommunesPlone will then pay a contribution in order to ensure the everlastingness of the project.

What are future prospects?

Other modules are being studied or development:

• The mail monitoring

• The room reservation (with generation of a point "College", and access via the communal web site).

• Accessibility to the disabled (anysurfer label)

Conclusion

CommunesPlone is a "spontaneous" pooling project coming from the base and meeting a need to be associated in order to cope with the lack of control of their information technology, with the desire to improve the management tools and to envisage a medium-term view. The pressure of the E-Government makes this situation even more acute.

Other pooling projects undertaken by other administrations also carried out this type of reflection. All these initiatives have to be supported. It would also be desirable that exchanges take place regularly between these projects. The objective being finally to improve the service for the citizen.