Tim Hunt, Comms Lead from LocalGov Drupal, explores open source and digital transformation within local government
Open source projects and products are transforming local government services, reducing costs and increasing flexibility.
LocalGov Drupal is a leading example of a healthy open source project, but not all open source projects are suitable for councils. What critical factors should councils consider when assessing an open-source solution?
Seven things councils need to consider
1. Community
Successful open source software tends to have a large, vibrant, diverse community of users and developers. Check how many people use the software, how many organisations contribute, and whether regular meetups or events exist.
LocalGov Drupal has over 50 contributing councils and 25 suppliers and is growing weekly. They have regular community meetings and a Slack channel (with roughly 800 users) that’s always buzzing with updates and helpful responses to common problems.
2. Development practices
Good development practices are essential, especially when sharing code between organisations. This includes coding standards, using clear commit messages and comprehensive documentation. Look for defined development standards.
LocalGov Drupal builds on Drupal’s excellent best practices, developed over two decades of experience, making it easier for new developers to understand and extend code and functionality.
3. Security
Security is paramount. Healthy open source software is usually more secure than proprietary counterparts, with many more eyes and security scans due to the code being made public. Having a dedicated security team to monitor security issues and coordinate releases is critical. Councils should ask how security issues are reported and how often security updates are released?
LocalGov Drupal is covered by Drupal’s security advisory policy, which clearly defines the process for reporting and addressing security issues with a dedicated team and regular release windows. Security updates are clearly explained and given a severity rating so developers can assess the urgency or relevance to their sites.
4. Integrations
Consider how the new software will integrate with your current software offerings. Are there open APIs for sending and receiving data?
LocalGov Drupal is working with Netcall on a suite of integrations with their low-code products to give content designers seamless integrations of forms and other back-end processes. They’re also working with GovMetric and Bookinglab to join up their products.
5. Documentation
Good documentation is essential. It should help explain what the software does and how to use it. It should be clearly presented, robust, regularly updated and serve multiple audiences: end users, developers, and decision- makers.
LocalGov Drupal have a healthy documentation site, clear README.md files in all projects, a YouTube channel and a Slack community with an ecosystem of councils and suppliers with a wealth of information.
6. Support
Open source products don’t always have a traditional support model, so a community of users and developers often provide support and bug fixes. Our community is an excellent example of this. Devs from our core team, councils, and suppliers all contribute to ensure questions are answered and bugs fixed. Make sure you check out the support offered by the community or your supplier before you commit.
7. Accessibility
All local authority sites must be WCAG- accessible, but if we want to create an inclusive work environment, the back end must be accessible, too. The localgov_sa11y feature helps tick this box by providing devs and content designers with instant feedback on the accessibility of their content and the distribution.
Seven ways councils can get the most out of their open source solution
1. Contribute to the project Contributing code back to the project helps strengthen the software for all users, allowing others to use your improvements. It also means your customisations are peer-reviewed, covered by security policies and available for others to fix or extend, leading to tangible benefits. Additionally, it demonstrates a commitment to collaborative development and encourages others to do the same. Councils also contribute in other ways. Product testing and road mapping are just two examples.
Many councils and suppliers regularly contribute to LocalGov Drupal building and testing new features. For example, with funding from Essex County Council, suppliers created a new election functionality developed for Hammersmith & Fulham Council, and everyone can now use that. LocalGov Drupal also has subscribers who contribute financially to the project.
2. Follow open source development principles
Open source software thrives on open, modular, flexible, and iterative development. When building a new feature, build it to be open from the start, with generic naming, shared functionality, and good coding standards, and share it early, ideally developing it in the open.
This increases the quality from the start with the knowledge that it is public and peer-reviewed code. Reworking custom code to be sharable afterwards is also much more challenging.
The LocalGov Drupal community exemplifies this by encouraging councils to build and share modular features in the open. They break work into manageable pieces with clear goals. For example, the LocalGov Drupal’s Alert Banner module is a distinct feature that councils can implement without any dependencies on other areas of the system. You can even use it on regular Drupal websites.
3. Use open standards
Use open standards like HTML5, CSS, JSON. Open standards encourage interoperability and avoid vendor lock-in, an important principle for public sector organisations that need flexibility in their digital solutions. For example, LocalGov Directories uses the Open Referral UK standard to support publishing and consuming community service listings in a standard format, allowing other systems to consume the data.
4. Help ensure transferability
Solutions and licences that can be transferred across the public sector will benefit everyone. The LocalGov Drupal distribution is designed to be shared and reused by any UK council. Licensing under GPL2 ensures any modifications remain open and transferable to other councils and organisations that want
to use them.
4. Help ensure transferability
Solutions and licences that can be transferred across the public sector will benefit everyone. The LocalGov Drupal distribution is designed to be shared and reused by any UK council. Licensing under GPL2 ensures any modifications remain open and transferable to other councils and organisations that want
to use them.
In Italy, Design System .italia was launched by the Italian State’s Open Source Design System to provide guidance and tools to create better public digital interfaces and experiences. Hackney City Council have also produced something similar.
6. Select open source solutions based on long-term value for money
Consider open source solutions alongside proprietary software when making procurement decisions. Select the best value-for-money solution, considering the total lifetime cost of ownership, including customisation
costs, extending the functionality, support, hosting, security and training, which are often overlooked at the procurement stage.
Councils of all shapes and sizes use LocalGov Drupal, and implementation costs vary depending on the councils’ requirements. Re-platforming can be undertaken at a relatively low cost, but costs can be higher for councils wanting to transform their content for enhanced page types. You can find case studies on our site.
7. Choose suitable projects
Ensure projects have a clear, approved open source license to avoid legal or operational risks. LocalGov Drupal operates under the GPL-2.0 license, approved by the Open Source Initiative, ensuring all councils have the freedom to use, modify, and share the software.
Thanks to Finn Lewis (LocalGov Drupal), Stellar Power (Annertech), and Jonny Holden (poppop) for contributing to this article.
LocalGov Drupal is built by councils, for councils. Join a growing community of digital professionals transforming digital services in local government.
https://www.drupal.org/project/localgov
https://github.com/localgovdrupal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
