Red Hat Enterprise CMS and Portal Server: Making Government Accessible Through APLAWS
Jeremy Tuck, APLAWS Programme Manager, London Borough of Camden
The Problem: Mandate for e-Government
Around the globe, politicians, appointed officials, and citizens are demanding better access to information and services offered by their governments. This demand continues to increase, even as budgets decrease.
UK Government has set the target for all local authorities to have their services online by 2005. This has been supported by a series of central government funded projects. One of the original projects was the Accessible and Personalised Local Authority Websites (APLAWS) project. (www.aplaws.org.uk), led by the London Borough of Camden.
"The Borough of Camden serves a diverse public with a wide variety of services," explains Jeremy Tuck, Camden's APLAWS Programme Manager. "We’re trying to provide joined up government in a way that is accessible, efficient, and socially inclusive. Reaching and serving as many people as possible at the lowest possible cost is the job of government. We therefore needed a robust, yet intuitive solution for web content management that served our longer-term intentions, was standards-based, and also provided a flexible platform for building web applications and portals."
The Solution: Red Hat Enterprise CMS and Portal Server
The APLAWS Project chose Red Hat as their solution provider. "Red Hat’s technology and business model fit well with our objectives," says Tuck. "Red Hat Enterprise CMS and Portal Server applications already provided many of the capabilities we needed. Additionally, their reputation as the leader in open source technologies aligned completely with our desire to make the product freely available to all levels of UK Government ."
Developing a Flexible System
Building on Red Hat Enterprise CMS and Portal Server, Red Hat and the APLAWS Project worked closely to develop a solution to deliver scalable web content management with a sound portal framework. With APLAWS, governments can rapidly update and publish web content and provide web applications. This empowers the public to serve itself, all within a seamless browser environment.
APLAWS offered the content creation, user permissioning, workflow and lifecycle management capabilities the local governments and agencies required. The portal framework also provided essential functions such as user and group management and a portlet API. Several portlets were incorporated into APLAWS, including simple survey and bulletin boards. The result is a web presence that is dynamic, interactive and extensible.
Adhering to Standards
While these capabilities were important to the APLAWS Project, adherence to standards was equally important. They wanted to facilitate the creation of a community while ensuring interoperability across the systems and information delivered. Like all Red Hat content management and portal solutions, APLAWS is written entirely in Java and conforms to established standards for web-based applications, such as J2EE and XML. With specific navigation, categorization, metadata, and taxonomies designed for local governments and compliant to existing frameworks, APLAWS successfully provides interoperability.
Working with the Industry Leader
Red Hat also offered the APLAWS Project the confidence that comes from working with a leading global technology solutions supplier. "Red Hat delivered great technology, but technology alone is not enough," Tuck explains. "Key to the success of any development project is sustainability and supportability. Red Hat offers the professional services, support and maintenance, and training that are essential to the widespread adoption of the APLAWS solution. And, we know that Red Hat will be around for the long-term."
Since the formal introduction of APLAWS, there have been more than 500 downloads of the source code by Local Authorities and other supporting organizations. APLAWS has been implemented by over 10 local authorities.
Keys to Success
- "Out of the box" features of CMS met the most important needs
- Open source model brought affordability and flexibility
- Portal technology integrated easily with Chat and Bulletin Boards
- Java architecture of Red Hat Enterprise CMS and Portal Server
- Conformance with e-GIF and metadata standards for systems interoperability (Dublin Core)
- Content categorization and organization kept simple
- Reliable support and professional services from Red Hat
For more information about the APLAWS project, visit www.aplaws.org.uk
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