Date post: | 19-Nov-2014 |
Category: |
Technology |
Upload: | epracticeeu |
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A three year cross border project between the University of Applied Sciences in Vaasa and the
University of Umeå.
Funded by Botnia-Atlantica (a European territorial Cooperation program), County
Administration of Västerbotten and Regional Council of Ostrobothnia
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Open Kvarken
Open Kvarken
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Parents´ Meeting
A system for digital communication between daycare and home
In use at more than 300 daycare/school in Sweden and Finland
Developed in cooperation with municipality & university
OSOR, Bryssel 110407
Open Kvarken
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The IT situation in Swedish daycare/schools
• Standardized on proprietary platforms
• Centralized IT-department
• Questions regarding Open source
• Unknown vendors for Open source
• Difficult to establish Communities
OSOR, Bryssel 110407
• Teachers unsure about new tools
• IT, low priority among teachers
• Little time for learning new system
• Open Kvarken - offer free testproject
Open Kvarken
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Experience and lesson learnt
OSOR, Bryssel 110407
Parents Meeting - free Open Source (GPL licensed)
• Communicate with your children's daycare 24h/7.
• Higher quality in communication with parents, no lost notes and post-it
• Information about plans and daily matters via Parents´ Meeting.
• More time for talking with parents about children’s progress
• More time for work together with children
Open Source in School
• Close contact with teachers/users
• Competence
• Procurement traditionally buys products
• SaaS and support
• Stimulate communities for user
Open Kvarken
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Parents´ Meeting - next step
• Report experiences from test and interview teachers and parents
• Develop more functionality and new modules
• Contact and promote new vendors about commercial packaging
• Support vendor with different approaches to sell/use the product
In-house installations with remote support
Software as a Service in the Cloud
Supportdesk and development
Strengthen the community
• Negotiate “contract” with at least 1 municipality, and 5 other customers
• Support collaboration between users
OSOR, Bryssel 110407
Open Kvarken
Development of two new E-systems for the municipality of Korsholm
• Municipalities are usually not interested in technical IT-questions, they just want a working system.
• When talking about Open source and it’s benefits it is easy to get the customer intrigued and make them understand the benefits that come with using open software.
• The issue is that when it comes to implementing new systems, they are usually reluctant to replace an old one since it’s working.
• That’s why the ideal time to implement open source is when there’s a “problem to solve”.
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Open Kvarken
”Problem” = Opportunity to develop a new resource and course e-system.
• The entire Municipality was in need of new systems because the systems they had purchased was no longer being developed by the vendor.
• Expensive license fees.
What Open Kvarken did was explain the OS concept and the freedom it gives.
• By using already existing OSS as the base for the new systems the development costs can be reduced allot.
• By using OS licenses their environment will become more open and allows more flexibility in the future.
• Able to change supplier if disappointed with support.
• No license fees
Open Kvarken also wrote the specifications for the systems in collaboration with the municipality.
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Open Kvarken
Understanding Open Source
• One way of getting a municipality to understand the benefits of using OSS is to address their needs and explain how they can benefit from openlicensing in the future
• By addressing their needs the Municipalities will listen, make them interrested and involved in the process.
• Municipalities are often intrigued when shown the benefits and opportunities that comes from using OSS and the possibilities of collaborating with other municipalities in future development.
• Able to get new features through other partners developing.
• Able to change supplier if disappointed with support.
• Shifting the power from companies to the customer. Instead of companies showing what they can offer let the Municipality specify what they need.
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Open Kvarken
e-Booking system | Next step
• The E-booking is a system aimed for handling and allocating resources inside a municipality.
• Resources can be conference rooms, football fields, building’s, coffee, etc.
• With features as, drag ’n drop bookings, reservations, schedule building and lots more.
• Department specified recourses.
OSOR, Bryssel 110407 9
• Continued meetings with the municipality to identify other needs.
• Integration into the organization
• Commercialization plan, municipality interested in SaaS?
• Publish the code on a public repository (AGPL license)
• Getting a community started
• Future support and development
• Improve collaboration between municipalities
• Cross-border implementations and support
Open Kvarken
Difficulties and Challenges for Open Source- Procurement is traditional with focus on standard products
- Licensing and insecurity about consequences
- Centralized IT-department, top down management
- Low interest from IT to install, test and evaluate Open Source programs
- Few Open Source vendors with business competence and experience
+ Sell functionality – not technology
+ Open environment and flexibility
+ Promote contact with customer to define their problem and needs
+ e-Services built on Open Source for better price and economy
+ Open Source and collaboration as a democratic productionmodel
+ Cost effective solutions with short time to market
+ Lower lifecycle cost, no initial license fee, share support and maintenance