The OpenPublic project builds upon the experiences of government web sites such as the White House and the New York State Senate which have successfully used Drupal to build open gov oriented sites. These projects have demonstrated that a “government 2.0” platform is possible using Drupal, but building them has previously required a high level of commitment and expertise in Drupal. And while there are many discussions, conferences, and ideas around “open government,” we have not yet seen a major effort toward an extensible, powerful platform to meet these varying needs while maintaining the rigorous standards and security measures necessary to properly power government sites while serving citizens with open and accessible information.
Through an emerging collaborative effort, OpenPublic will be a free, open source, Drupal distribution that government entities can use as a platform from to rapidly build and deploy affordable, standards-compliant public information websites. As the first open source CMS distribution for government, OpenPublic enables government and constituents to collaborate within a software ecosystem in which systems and code are collectively built and shared. This opens new opportunities to build, share, report on, and make use of government information online.
Video at archive.org.
This session will be of great interest to evaluators, developers, implementers and adopters of Drupal in a public sector environment. This session will also serve as a great introduction to both the world of Drupal distributions and the emerging role of Drupal in government.
Comments
Municipal government sites
How relevant do you anticipate OpenPublic will be to those who are interested in a distro for municipal governments? In particular, I'm curious how municipal code and bylaws, as well as the regular meetings that inform their changes, can be made more accessible through notifications, transcribed and indexed video, and linked agenda/minute data.
Is there a place for this within OpenPublic, or would these needs be best addressed by another distro?