Open Web Initiative
The Open Web Initiative (OWI) is a
community driven, managed web platform for public sector and not
for profit organisations. It delivers all of the functional
requirements you need to ensure that your web presence portrays a
professional and modern organisation.
Background
The adoption of Open Source technology in the UK Public Sector
has been slower than elsewhere in Europe, but the current financial
climate is quickly changing this. Public sector budget cuts have
placed a much greater emphasis on cost. No longer is value and long
term return on investment satisfactory from a purchasing
standpoint, the solutions have to be inexpensive as well as
extensible, feature rich and robust.
By any measure, government and government funded agencies are
perfectly placed for Open Source. This has been proven in Holland
for the past two years where the Dutch government mandated that
Open Source software should be used where it is a viable
alternative to that of a proprietary vendor.
What is OWI?
OWI is a managed service provided to a community of
organisations with similar requirements and budgetary challenges.
On joining the OWI community a member organisation is
equipped with all the tools they need to deliver their web
presence, as well as the opportunity to drive product development
to continually enhance the service.
In a nutshell the aim of the Open Web
Initiative is to increase the availability of robust, extensible
CMS technology and foster shared innovation, while lowering costs
through the reuse of core code and functionality.
What is included?
The Open Web Initiative build comprises of a
complete tool set required for any organisation to run a
website:
- A content management system (Umbraco)
- Modular functions (packages)
- Page templates
- Design
- Hosting
- Training
- Support
- A Service Level Agreement
- A roadmap of continual development (driven by the Initiative
members)
The functions contained within the base build are modular and
will be deployed to each and every site to simplify maintenance and
support; they don’t have to be used, but are available if required.
By delivering a solution in this manner, we can guarantee solution
stability and deliver support at a fraction of the usual cost for a
complex web deployment.
Any new web site project will include the following project
overheads; scoping and analysis, information architecture, design,
development, testing, deployments, hosting, training and support.
The Open Web Initiative build contains all of these, but the
complex areas of development, testing and scoping have already been
completed. Everything required to run your website is therefore
contained within one single and low cost monthly payment. OWI
offers a considerably more cost effective solution than buying an
off-the-shelf content management system because we have done this
work already.
OWI Platform - Why we use Umbraco
Auros uses Umbraco, an open source .Net content management
system for the Open Web Initiative project. The base build is
tested, quality assured and managed with all code included within
the base build to ensure accessibility, stability and the integrity
of the platform. To ensure ongoing stability and improvement of the
Umbraco product, Auros will be contributing to Umbraco and the open
source community.