That's right, the world's most powerful government has looked for a new platform for their web site, and chosen our own favourite web tool: Drupal! Apart from this being a huge triumph for the Drupal community, it is also a big deal for the Open Source movement in general. Their choice tells the world, and web industry in particular, that open source, community developed software can be as stable, secure and powerful as its supporters have long claimed it to be.
Tim O'Reilly comments this move on his blog:
What [using open source software] will do is increase the amount of value we get for our money and the speed with which new technology can be adopted. Features that would have cost millions of dollars and years of development to add will now be rolled into the scope of current contracts.
The move to Drupal is also a testament to the success of the so called Social web, as opposed to more one-way communicating web sites that government agencies and similar organizations traditionally use. President Obama in his campaign lead the way by successfully using the web in innovative ways, not least through another Drupal site: change.gov. (And even before that, the democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean used Drupal in his campaign.)
White House representative Macon Phillips, quoted in this Washington Post article, says:
"We now have a technology platform to get more and more voices on the site. … This is state-of-the-art technology and the government is a participant in it."
Many organizations in different parts of the world are now moving in this direction: towards free, open software, and towards a more transparent, two-way, social communication. Maybe this is the time when Swedish official institutions and corporations start making a change and become part of this transition. Because it seems as if Sweden's large institutions have been falling slightly behind in these areas. There is however an increasing number of exceptions to this, such as Bonnier, SonyEricsson, TV3 and Karlstad University who all use Drupal. We're hoping for many more in the near future.
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