This document summarizes an open source best practices presentation for law enforcement personnel. It discusses the community source model for collaborative open source development between agencies. Examples of successful community source projects are provided, such as LEADR for law enforcement data sharing. Best practices that contribute to success include having formal governance, leadership buy-in, releasing code often, and vendor participation. Challenges that can kill a project are loss of leadership, lack of communication, and releases that are too slow. The presentation concludes with a discussion of attracting law enforcement to open source and standards that could enable further collaboration.

1. Open Source Best Practices
in the Public Sector
Special Emphasis on Law Enforcement
Deborah Bryant
Public Sector Communities Manager
OSU Open Source Lab
Charleston, South Carolina
December 5, 2008

2. Note from the presenter
The following presentation was created for a meeting of law
enforcement agency personnel gathered to explore the success and
further possibilities for the LEADR project, an outstanding example of
interagency collaboration for the purpose of exchanging information.
A short list of participants included representation from:
• Department of Homeland Security offices of
– Policy - Emergency Preparedness and Response - Private
Sector
• National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center Southeast
• Los Angeles County, California Sheriff’s Department
• Open Source Software Institutive
• Oregon State University Open Source Lab
The meeting was hosted by the South Carolina Research Authority

3. Today’s Discussion
The 15 minute agenda
• Perspective
• Prevailing model for Open Source Development
in government
• Case studies nutshell
• Best Practices
• Lessons learned

4. Community Source Model
Coined by Brad Wheeler, CIO Indiana U.
• A term distinguishing open source software development
of broad interest such as…
– Linux operating system or
– Apache web server
• From software of shared interest by a narrower
community of interest for their use such as
– LEADRS for law enforcement
– Sakai course management for higher education
– OpenVista for hospital management

5. Case studies nutshell
The short list
• LEADR
• NCOMS
• Capsit
• Sakai
• Health Atlas Ireland
• PloveGov communities

6. Best Practices
Every successful project includes
•
•
•
•
Formal Governance
Neutral third party organization
Well-formed rationale/ROI for each participant
Strong leadership
– Including champion in all organizations
• Some Face to face meetings
• Vendor support / participation in one form or another
– Development services
– Systems Integration
– Skill set / training
– But CUSTOMER/USERS drives the train

7. More best practices
Contributing to success
• Project started with existing code
• Project started with a small core group
• High degree of trust among the members
– Most likely have worked on other projects before
• Grew the community after first code release
• Moves fast, releases code often
• All best practices for project management apply

8. Law Enforcement Project Attractors
• Open Standards + Open Source = Interoperability.
• Strong industry associations exist that create natural
partnerships
• Local entities are resource constrained and will consider
no-cost / low-cost solutions
• The benefit of information sharing is well worth the
journey to get there.

9. Top Project Killers
• Loss of leadership
– Retirement
– Job change or refocus of priorities
• Lack of communications
– Lack of outreach / marketing
– Insufficient face to face time to overcome project
challenges
• Value by way of code releases too slow to meet
stakeholder needs
• Obvious - loss of funding, but most typically precipitated
by bullets one and two.

10. NCOMS Lesson Learned
• Multi-jurisdictional / multi state projects (the consortium)
should consider shared procurement to be out of scope
– Disparate states with varying procurement rules are
challenged to come land on a single contract vehicle
that meets all of their statutory obligations
– Instead focus on Intellectual property, business and
technology requirements and standards; not services
procurement

11. Today’s Discussion
The other 45 minutes agenda
• Q&A
• Discussion items from group?
• Possible discussion:
–
–
–
–
What might the LEADR program do to increase its use?
What help could DHS offer to support marketing its project?
What other existing project could be adopted to this model?
What standards exist that could be levered? What standards are
needed to make the project viable?
– Can DHS prescribe policy requiring new projects be done in a
collaborative manner?

12. Supplemental Material
For further exploration
• The Open Source Lab
• The Government Open Source Conference
• National Corrections Offender Management System
(NCOMS)
• Capsit OpenRMS
• Health Atlas Ireland
• Armada
• Warwickshire Police
• Online Police Station (Italy)

13. OSU Open Source Lab
www.osuosl.org
• Hosts and supports approximately 35
significant open source projects
including
• Linux Foundation Infrastructure
• Linux Kernal
• Apache Foundation Infrastructure
• Drupal content management
system
• Instrumental to Mozilla’s Firefox
support and distribution for three years
• 25 million unique visitors a day
• Approximately 20 professional staff
and students
• Operates within administrative
computing (non-academic) providing
unique, first-class industry view

14. Government Open Source Conference
Now in its fifth year, the
permanent GOSCON
archive site contains
presentation materials
from industry
luminaries and
government
management experts.
www.goscon.org
Produced by OSL
Pubic Sector Program
as a key public-private
sector platform for
collaboration,
education.

15. National Consortium for Offender
Management System (NCOMS)
www.ncoms.us
Members:
Alaska
Idaho
Montana
Missouri
South Carolina
Tennessee
Colorado
Kansas
New Mexico
Oregon
Texas
Utah
Formed in 2003 as a grass
roots coalition of State
Correctional Agencies
organized for the purpose of
developing, maintaining, and
enhancing a comprehensive
offender management system
based on “Open Source”
technology and standards.
The goal of this system is to
be able to track all aspects of
offender incarceration,
supervision, and rehabilitation
from a single application.

16. State & Local: Capsit
Capsit’s original
seed funding from
the US Justice
Department grant
for interoperable
data, created
OpenRMS,
currently working
to identify a
sustainable
model.
www.capsit.org

17. Int’l: Health Atlas Ireland
Current:
• Health Atlas Ireland is an open source application
developed to bring health related datasets, statistical tools
and GIS together in a web environment to add value to
existing health data. The application enables controlled
access to maps, data and analyses for service planning and
delivery, major incident response, epidemiology and
research to improve the health of patients and the
population. Health Atlas Ireland is built upon open source
software allowing it to capitalize on worldwide expertise
without software licensing cost.
• The purpose of the system is to help answer questions
related to health events, emergency response, health
services and demographics, initially in the Republic of
Ireland and eventually worldwide as related to Irish Health
Services.
www.epractice.eu/cases/healthatlas

18. Int’l: Health Atlas Ireland
New modules under development
• Emergency Response (plume modeling
for dangerous substances etc), identifying
addresses and population under threat • residential and non residential alerts etc
• Road Safety (identify blackspots,
highlight initiatives such as speed
cameras, allow query of accident data)
• Crime and Incident data query and
reporting by the public
• Resource Planning - similar to Health
Service Resource
• Planning - catchments, locations, event
data, statistics etc..
www.openapp.ie/sections/projects/health-atlas-ireland

19. Int’l: Armada information sharing
Located in
Belfast,
Ireland, in the
US they are
collaborating
with Ohio
counties.
www.armadagroupinc.com/solutions.htm

20. Int’l: Regional Interagency Portal
The Kent Connects project
is enabling the
transformation of Kent's
public services through
technology. With a
membership comprised of all
the Kent and Medway
authorities, Kent Police, and
Kent Fire & Rescue Service,
Kent Connects is a powerful
county wide alliance of
public service providers.
plone.net/buzz/kent-connects-project-makes-final-four-in-innovation-awards

21. International: Warwickshire Police
Project Description at:
http://
www.zeapartners.org/
Members/netsight/
warwickshire-policeforce
www.warwickshire.police.uk/

22. International: Online Police Station
Sidebar: epractice.eu is
an rich resource of case
studies for both
proprietary and open
source software projects
in government.
OSL plans to launch a
US equivalent focused
on OSS in Q1 2009.
www.epractice.eu/cases/olps

23. LEADR
Initiated as a county collaboration, the LEADR system is now in
use by the states of South Carolina and Tennessee, with over 250
agencies additional agencies adopting LEADR.
This cost-effective open source based software is now freely
available to all law enforcement agencies. Key capabilities include
data sharing, web-based records management and gang data
collection and reporting.
statefusioncenter.com/leadr_at_a_glance.shtml

24. for further information contact:
Deborah Bryant
Public Sector Communities Manager
Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSL)
deborah@ousosl.org
971.533.8050
OSL: www.osuosl.org
Government Open Source Conference: www.goscon.org