Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part VIII

eGovernment applications need to cost less, allow for rapid development, provide a user-friendly experience for constituents and offer enhanced security. Linux provides everything eGovernment initiatives need. It also provides a scalable savings opportunity for the People, which can run into billions of dollars.

In recent surveys, we have discovered government agencies spending tens of thousands of dollars to have someone build relatively sparse public web sites. "Rhode Island put itself on the cutting edge of hot-technology uptake last year when it became one of the first state governments to get beyond traditional government conservatism and implement open-source technology", writes Lisa Vaas in eWeek. "The gamble is paying off: The bill for the state's rules and regulations database came in at $40,000--only $6,000 of which was hardware costs and took one consultant four months working only two days a week to complete." But, as Neil Aggarwal of JAMM Consulting responded, "that seems awfully high".

In today's economy, state and local government agencies should think in terms of cutting that cost by well over 50% if using outside contractors. In many cases, a local agency with a Linux developer could bring in such a project for the cost of payroll in less than a month's time.

A writer recently posted a comment saying:

Technology workers in government rarely consider broad public sector issues, which are better left up to politicians. Still, consider the implications of the use of standardized open-source applications in state and local government. For example, each county and parish in the US requires a register of deeds database application. With 3,142 counties (of the 87,525 local governments) in the 50 states, why should each of them have to write a separate application? Proprietary applications for this task, at the national average of $50,000, total $157.1 million. Keep in mind, that figure represents only a single database application.

As we look at different applications, we can begin to scrape together system requirements. Most government applications need databases. They manage records with similar information, such as birth certificates, drivers' licenses, criminal records, jury summons, trial dates, property tax records and so on. Let's look at a few that may not seem as obvious to a casual observer:

From this thumbnail, we can see that managing records is the common element of government processes. They easily fall under the domain of a thin client or three-tier architecture. Linux works well in this environment.

As state and local governments begin to automate and/or Web-enable business processes, we can begin to move decimal points to the right of the $157.1 million amount listed above. Suddenly, the costs start moving into the billions of dollars. Shouldn't taxpayers know and understand the savings available by using Linux and open-source Software?

LAMP can use the open-source MySQL relational database, which is quite popular both inside and outside the Open Source community. MySQL facilitates LAMP's acceptance in government development circles, because MySQL runs on several platforms, including Linux, OS X and the one from Redmond.

In development of government applications, the use of Perl, PHP and Python for server-side scripting usually depends on departmental resources. For example, many Web developers have used Perl with Apache for years. Human resource recruiters can find an abundance of programmers with Perl experience.

PHP works well for creating dynamic web pages, similar to Active Server Pages (ASP). Developers also find similarities between PHP and Macromedia's Cold Fusion. Win32-trained developers can make the leap to PHP easily, as it adds tags to Web pages to control how applications execute functions and how content is displayed.