One of the local government stories (success and challenge) we’d hoped to see at GOSCON this year was from the City of Northglenn, Colorado. Christine Martinez, formerly a systems analyst there, can’t join us this year but she was kind enough to share her slide set on that city’s extensive use of open source software which she presented last year at the 2007 National Association of Government Webmasters Conference held in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
The project list covered in the presentation includes:
- Joomla! CMS (and custom supporting applications)
- PHPSurveyor
- WebDocs
- PHPLists
- NGDIS (Northglenn Document Imaging System)
- Police Bulletin Board
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of E-Government. Northglenn’s out-the-box thinking netted web services to city employees that they could use without the IT department’s intervention. And how many small towns have a document imaging system? If you’re living in a small town, government transparency by way of the Internet depends on the webmaster’s work load and vacation schedule. Good Content Management Systems (CMS) make it easy for non-technical public service employees to share what’s up at your seat of government. Impressive and resourceful.
You can view the presentation on GoogleDocs.
Bryant Group 