Sambruk, an association of Swedish public administrations that jointly tackle software development projects based on open source, finds that these applications are more innovative and more focused on their actual needs, concludes Thomas Rosenfall, a PhD student at the Linköping University in Sweden.
Sambruk includes 100 of Sweden's 290 municipalities, and several other other government agencies. By collaborating on open source applications, they try to rid themselves of oligopolies and IT vendor lock-in, describes Rosenfall. For many applications tailored to municipalities, there are just two suppliers and until recently procurement policies obstructed open source solutions. This led to increasing costs for licences and maintenance.
The PhD student presented his study into Sambruk at a conference in the Czech city of Jihlava, on 29 March. The conference was organised by the Osepa consortium.
Sambruk allows even non-members to participate in their open source projects. It also makes it easier to switch IT service providers, stresses Rosenfall. "And, because their solutions are developed as open source, there is a fair chance that others will innovate on the application, even after Sambruk."
Purchasing power
The Sambruk Association was founded in 2005. It main goals are to get public administrations to collaborate in developing and sharing of e-government services. The group also aims to increase the purchasing powers of the smaller members. The municipalities working together in Sambruk represent over half the country's population.
Any of the Sambruk members can suggest a project. When adopted, financing and procurement of the development is organised by Sambruk. Each project gets a supervisory board to evaluate the work, oversee the financing, sign agreements with suppliers and participants and to establish the terms of use and distribution.
Rosenfall also looked in detail at two of the many projects developed by Sambruk. The first is a project with an external supplier Streamflow, a customer support system. The second is an example of a project developed by a researcher, Bita, a personal assistance system.
Streamflow was made available commercially by the service provider contracted for the development this February. Sambruk's involvement means there will also be a free and open source product available as well.
Bita, developed by researcher from the University of Uppsala is meant to make speed up decision making for bureaucratic processes involving local administrations and Swedish social insurance organisations.
More information:
Sambruk
Streamflow
Bita