Local government
Towns, cities, rural districts, and other municipalities could benefit greatly by migrating from frequently proprietary and outdated software services to world-class free software content management systems built for community involvement... such as Drupal. Join this group to work on features for people's participation or to be part of the people participating to push their governments to serve them better with web sites geared to give more information and engage people with greater involvement.
Starter Web Site - Next Step
Brian Gilday at aHa! consulting did a post almost three months ago which led us to a conversation by phone and email. I would suggest you all revisit this discussion but would in particular draw your attention to the West Linn site.
At the West Linn site you will not only see a clean, well organized, site (imo) but you will also see an example of personalization - My West Linn - something we were keen on at the Wayland ECC.
Login Limbo
Sorry everyone. I was one of the users who got caught in "login limbo" and haven't been able to either log into the groups site or, for that matter, get it fixed. You might say Gordon Fowler is still there and Fowler Gordon has emerged to take his place.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to get my old self back. It might well have been self-inflicted, but how would I know?
In the mean time there are a few things to bring up and I'll do so in the appropriate section. Maybe we can get things moving again.
Gordon .... er... or is it Fowler?
Last chance for workflow support in D7 Core
While the more expansive workflow features that were proposed did not make it in time for code freeze, we still have an opportunity during the current "code slush" period to make a few key alterations to the underlying Drupal database. This will enable further development in Contrib of comprehensive workflow and content moderation modules, with an eye towards D8. However, time is running out. After October 15, all hope is lost.
Open Source for America
http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/
Sounds like our kind of organization!
Opportunity for better workflow/content moderation support in Core
The upcoming Drupal 7 update brings with it a great opportunity to provide better support in Core for advanced workflows with content moderation, but the code freeze is fast approaching and this opportunity may pass us by. I encourage all developers to check out Support Revisions in Different States in the Drupal issue queue and lend a hand.
Why you should care?
Local governments using Drupal
This is meant to be a resource/reference list of municipal, county and other local government agencies/departments currently using Drupal. If you know of one not on the list, please add it.
Municipalities
USA
AZ - www.cityofnogales.net
CA - City of Garden Grove, California
IA - City of Marion, Iowa
GA - Macon, GA
IL - Bloomingdale, IL
KS - www.olatheks.org
KS - www.lawrenceks.org
NY - village.fredonia.ny.us
NY - www.townofgreenport.com
NY - City of Peekskill, New York
NY - Rhinebeck, NY
OK - www.planitulsa.org
OR - Lebanon, OR
OR - Pilot Rock, OR
OR - www.pendletonpolice.com
OR - www.westlinnoregon.gov
OR - www.orcity.org
OR - www.newbergoregon.gov
SC - www.williston-sc.com
Canada
ON - www.collingwood.ca
Australia
QLD www.ourbrisbane.com
WA www.busselton.wa.gov.au
Spain
"Starter" Municipal Website
I'd like to propose creating a "starter" Municipal Website that could be used to replace 95+ percent of the existing sites that are now used by local communities.
The idea is that any community wanting to upgrade their current Website to a "2.0" capability could just install and theme it, and start populating the site with content. Developers could use it as starting point for more complex projects. A basic set of documentation could simplify implementation.
"Newsout" event Saturday in Boston
Members of this group in New England may be interested in this event:
How big is the market?
Here's a reason to focus on local government. I found it on Google Answers. The 2000 census says the United States of America market is:
city 10,016
comunidad 147
municipality 1
town 4,431
urbana 78
village 3,770
------------------
total 18,443
There's a request to generalize our new local government site into "government". I'm good with that. Everyone else?
OG for Local Government sites?
The Mission Statement of the Local Government group suggests using Organic Groups for a local government site, citing the ability for people to run their own sections. How would you set OG up for this? Would all posts be Public, and "membership" in a Group (department) only be necessary for maintainers?
I guess you could use Roles to allow non-Admin folks to join a departmental Group just for the OG Notification features.
"Award Winning Municipal Websites"
With my training wheels on, I'm going to start conversion of the Wayland ECC site over to Drupal as well as our local community television site. In the mean time there are a lot of resources the Committee gathered in the process of making recommendations on electronic communications with the Town. The site is http://www.mywayland.org.
Functionality of a government site
The following list started out as a digest of half a dozen RFPs for municipal websites all across the United States. It lists principal requirements ordered by how frequently they are requested. Many requirements overlap and/or are trivial for Drupalers, but that's how they appeared in the original RFPs so I left them as is.
It is amazing how well most of these real world requirements map to Drupal capabilities. There's a real opportunity here, you just gotta cut through the red tape of government contracts.
- Easy Navigation
- ADA/Section 508 compliance
- Distributed Authors/Editors
Welcome to the local government group! Open thread
If you don't feel authoritative enough yet to make or add to a wiki, well first of all you should anyway, and second of all here's an open thread where you can just post ideas!
The Issues Facing Towns Also Create Opportunies
Most medium and small municipalities lack the technical skill and resources to effectively use the Internet in their communities.
Issues:
- Shortfalls in revenue that are leading to reductions in staff and services.
- The complexity of current Web sites that limit the number of maintainers because of the need for installing desktop software and provision of training.
- The lack of integration into internal municipal business processes.
- A general lack of effective use of technology to improve productivity within towns.
Fourth sort-of-monthly MetroWest Massachusetts Meetup at Morse Institute Library in Natick
Right now you are probably asking yourself, "Why two Metrowest drupal meetups in one month?" Or maybe you are asking yourself, "Wait, what first meetup?" "Um, the one that was announced two days ahead of time," we confess, using advanced mind control (a soon-to-be-released Drupal module) to interrupt your internal monologue. To which you reply, "Just how much attention do you think anyone pays to you?"
Parts of a Municipal site
Principal sections of any site
Main Site
- News and Public Notices
- Link to directories:
** Committees
** Departments
** Staff
** Elected & Appointed Officials
** Major issues - Shortcuts to most visited sections
- Calendar of events
Sections
- Government and committee
** Agendas
** Meeting Schedules
** Meeting Minutes
** News
** Bid Postings
** Job Postings and Application
** Other documentation
** Comments and feedback
** Board/committee membership & contact information
** Polls - Department (by department cross department)
Expanded Mission Statement of the Drupal for Local Governments group
Local governments could benefit greatly by migrating from mostly proprietary and outdated tools to world-class free software content management system and community managing software... such as Drupal.
Drupal, with its strengths in many levels of access control (Drupal core roles) and allowing people to run their own sections of a site (Organic Groups) among many many other features, is a particularly good fit for the needs of city and town government departments and schools.
