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.

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• 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