Getting open source in Government (focusing on LAMP + Drupal)

Many people in government are just now to come to terms with the fact that
open source is here to stay. One recent example is from PWGSC who in
January put out a RFI to ask for input into a policy on government
procurement of no fee licensed software. The IRCAN initiative is another
great example of government agencies creating spaces to use and get involved
with open source in order to do a better job. There is still a considerable
amount of fear, uncertainty & doubt around though which is discouraging
adoption.

Some of the approaches that are useful to promote open source in government
include, establishing precedent, describing good practices, but also talking
about the values of merit based participation, cooperation with and
standards based development which fit nicely with the public service. Open source is
already being widely used in government (almost half of servers I surveyed),
so there is already a precedent. The processes behind supporting a
centralized CMS like Drupal are going to be more secure than present
practices (which involve nearly 20 million of individual dynamic web files
according to Google). Existing open source communities already have
expertise in accessible issues and are willing to share resources.
OpenConcept is working with several government departments to implement
Drupal based solutions and has been able to share solutions to reduce costs
and increase the deliverables.