The PloneGov project was competing in the "Local governments" category but won finally the “Grand prix du jury”, the most important price.

Around 45 Belgian, French, Spanish, Swiss, Argentinean cities and regions participate in the CommunesPlone project, renamed PloneGov on June1, 2007. The project is the results of a close collaboration between the public sector, SME and an open source community. In doing so, they aim to gain independence from traditional IT services providers by developing in a cooperative manner, applications and websites for their own use as well as for their citizens’. PloneGov strategy mainly rests on Open Source tools: Zope and Plone.

PloneGov’s expected benefits are: to enhance the applications’ consistency with the users’ needs; to promote collaborative websites; to use the most recent technologies while avoiding licence fees; to ensure publication of sources with GPL.

Products

PloneGov has generated concrete and usable tools such as a module to order administrative documents on the Internet, a business directory and local government websites (eg www.seneffe.be), a town council management module used by cities (Sambreville, etc.). Other tools are being currently developed including a certification module (through the eID card) and a documentary management tool.

Products are downloadable on www.plonegov.org

Policy context of operation

PloneGov project meets in several ways strategic objectives on e-government as defined in the EU e2010 renewed Lisbon initiative. It already reaches different layers of public administrations in 5 countries and is raising interest in a number of regions.

No citizens left behind

• Thousands cities and regions: PloneGov enables the smallest local government to benefit from e-government advantages.
• Promoting knowledge society: through cooperative portals, local communities enable their citizens and employees to really get into knowledge society as planned by Lisbon’s objectives.
  

Making efficiency and effectiveness in public services a reality

• Thanks to PloneGov, local authorities can work in a far better way for a better value for money. Moreover, Plone, the software at the basis of PloneGov, makes it possible to constantly add new interconnectable and interchangeable modules. Such flexibility confers an exceptional adaptability to the project
  

Putting key enablers in place

• SME partners: small local enterprises are natural partners of the project, as their teams size and practices are similar to small local governments.
• Open source communities’ partners: Plone community has a close relationship with PloneGov, to which it brings its experience.
• International: PloneGov project is open to international collaboration.
• Bottom-up strategy: PloneGov not only crosses borders, but reaches also beyond hierarchical divisions between different levels of power.
  

Strengthening participation and democratic decision making

• Participative democracy: the tools provided by PloneGov enable communities to favor a sound and sustainable participative democracy spirit via e-democracy.
• Digital divide: by reaching small local governments, the PloneGov is a solution to fight the digital divide in Europe (commerces, enterprises, schools, associations, etc.) and beyond (North-South collaboration).
  

Implementing high impact services

• Electronic ID : PloneGov takes e-privacy and e-security on board. Its technicians are familiar with Belgian e-ID.