Strengthened by experience, the Swedish municipality of Alingsås is increasingly turning to open source solutions, announced Göran Westerlund, head of the municipal IT department. “Open source is reducing our dependence on specific ICT suppliers”, Westerlund says.
The newest open source tool in use in Alingsås is Mule, an enterprise service bus framework, which is being implemented this month. In November the municipality wil add Apache Solr, a search platform. Both solutions will be integrated in the Alfresco document management system and Drupal content management system.Westerlund was one of the speakers at the Alfresco Summit, which took place in London last week.
He explained how Drupal and Alfresco's use of open standards allows the municipal administration to connect a multitude of other software solutions, proprietary as well as open source. One of the results is a well-organised Intranet, based on Alfresco, offering the municipal staff efficient access to information related to their tasks, to perform searches and to collaborate. The municipality is using Shibboleth, an open source single-sign in solution.
Improving work-flow
Alingsås' Intranet is intended for all municipal staffers and, according to Westerlund, is improving the work flow within the municipality. “There is less time spent looking for the right documents, and it is reducing the number of internal emails.”
The document management system is also greatly reducing the number of documents sent back and forth by email, he said. The system helps staffers keep tabs on governing documents, support records, departmental protocols and political procedures.
Early next year, Alingsås wil clone its Intranet and make it available to the municipality's school students, to use as an online collaboration platform.
Sharing code
The municipality is also sharing the improvements it makes to open source projects. Early last year it started publishing its Alfresco document templates and Swedish language pack and Drupal modules on the Google software development forge.