Can Django provide government with an interoperability environment?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steve Spiker on February 13, 2012 at 2:37pm

Our partners in Providence have been leading this effort for Rhode Island, they have some excellent tools built with open frameworks, largely Django or Rails systems, with some great cross agency integration:

http://www.ridatahub.org/

Their probationer data tools: http://neighborhoodindicators.org/library/catalog/implementing-rhod...

Integrated child databases system: http://neighborhoodindicators.org/get-involved/webinars/integrated-...

We are also working with the City of Oakland and Alameda County to help establish some open data frameworks for sharing between departments and jurisdictions, very early stages but some interest in this, except neither have any open source capacity which is a source of difficulty. The procurement process is likely the biggest issue for most agencies I expect, we need to tackle the lack of open source solution requirements so we can get out of the oracle/ibm/MS off the shelf model.

We've taken a slightly simpler approach in our work, we've been sourcing government data at record level and are publishing it all in a web mapping system with the ability to download the core data in aggregated formats, it's a long way from truly integrated systems but it does allow people in different agencies to access data across departments for the first time ever...

www.infoalamedacounty.org

Spike

Urban Strategies Council

Permalink Reply by Alex Glaros on February 13, 2012 at 4:42pm

Thanks Steve,

Your roadblock analysis is good and your organization rocks.

Would you say that in general, Django is a suitable framework for government interoperability implementation

Do you know of developers that can specifically comment on Django for government?  I’m looking for a list of pros and cons.

Thanks,

Alex Glaros

www.gov-ideas.com