This is a really cool story on how local governments can improve their presence on the Internet and save money using open source software. The City of Albert Lea needed to improve their website but the small Minnesota city was facing project costs of $10,000 to $30,000. In walks Wordpress being utilized as a full content management system. As reported by the Albert Lea Tribune:
Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a
Web-based content-management site that looks professional and is
consistent through and through. Fairbault is one instance.Albert Lea, however, paid $720 to local resident Jeshua Erickson
last December, she said. Kauffmann was in charge of the site’s
revision, and last October she put together a committee of city
officials to advise her.She said the committee decided to shoot for a site using a content
management system — or CMS — but it was outside of her Internet skills.
The city began seeking estimates from Web design companies. When the
estimates returned, they realized the city couldn’t afford it.“We just didn’t feel we could justify spending $20,000-plus on a Web
site,” Kauffmann said. “I happened to run into Jeshua Erickson on the
Pelican Breeze one day, and we talked about Web sites and how he was
developing them using WordPress.”
I'll have to say that even though Wordpress is open source and "free", this city got a steal with getting a website for under $1000. While Albert Lea is a small city, developing government sites can become big projects with lots of complications. Either the city was kind to the developer and his hours or he felt some civil duty to give the city's taxpayers a good deal. An example of this developer doing such a good job, Albert Lea's website is currently running Wordpress 2.7 which is the latest available version of Wordpress. Very well done Mr. Erickson.
Comments
Wordpress link
Looks like Matt picked up on this story: http://ma.tt/2009/01/albert-lea-wp/
thanks!
Thanks so much for your positive article about our project for the City of Albert Lea! I love WordPress, as you might be able to guess, so getting Wordpress working for a city website was quite rewarding. And, yes, it did take a bit of work. :)
Thanks for the thanks
Jeshua, glad you stopped by and left a comment. It is always nice to "meet" the people behind the story. Keep up the good work!
free mmorpg
Honestly, there is no justification for a public entity to spend $10,000 for a website. Its irresponsible, that's our tax dollars!
Kudos to the city of Albert Lea, I hope more schools, municipal governments, and other government entities follow suit.
Wordpress is indeed powerful. I've been using it for all my projects with a great deal of success.
I think all the kudos go to
I think all the kudos go to Jeshua Erickson rather than the city of Albert Lea. It is a bargain beyond belief made possible by Jeshua's "donation" of his time and skills.
Even if it only took 40 hours of his time to design and build the site (which I'm sure is a ridiculously low estimate), they only paid $18.75/hour for his work.
Don't know about your locale, but where I live it is not uncommon to pay anywhere between $50.00 to $100.00 per hour for the services of a competent and reliable web site designer.
Irresponsible
If websites weren't important for government, then it would have been irresponsible to pay that much. But these days websites are the main connection to a citizen and spending $100k would have been responsible if it provided everything it needed.
In the end, they'll need to have someone who knows what they're doing to go into the site and fix everything to their satisfaction. And it will end up costing at least $10,000.
Does it meet the needs of the users?
>> Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a Web-based content-management site that looks professional
There is no question that using free software can reduce costs, but the real cost of any web development project is not the software.
Certainly if you are an independent web contractor, a $50,000 project is a sweet gig to land, but at $100 per hour (a typical contractor rate), it's only about a 3-month project.
The same rules of business still apply regardless of the cost of the software. I wonder how much time the contractor is going to spend planning the taxonomy of the site, design, customization and maintenance. Not to mention time spent on requirements gathering, the review process and other project management tasks.
The real question is does the site meet the needs of the users? In the end, you get what you pay for. If the city paid $1,000 for their site, then chances are, they have a $1,000 web site. There is no real equity between the site that would have resulted from $50,000 paid to a qualified professional and a $1,000 paid to an equally qualified professional.
My point is not that the contractor who built the site is not a qualified professional or that WordPress is not a good solution, simply that price is not a very good way to evaluate the quality or success of a site. Users typically don't care how much you paid for your site. They want to know that it is sufficient to meet their needs.
Open Source is Dangerous
open source software is about as lame and dangerous as anything out there. One city in Florida who used an open source software to manage their site was hacked by terrorist and promptly migrated away to a higher quality solution. You get what you pay for with open source. THIS IS GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, not just a pretty website. Security is critical.
Open Source is actually MORE SECURE
Open Source security is perfectly fine, as long as you choose a secure project. If you go and dig up a project that is 2 years old and has 4 developers and do not update properly when vulnerabilities are identified, then, yes, you are going to get hacked.
Most Open Source is more secure than commercial applications.
In fact, the very fact of the source being open for review has the effect of creating applications which are more security hardened than proprietary applications which have source code only viewed by a handfull of in house developers, if they dont see the problem then someone else will.
The open development community of Open Source applications actually have the capability to fix bugs and security issues quicker than commercial software companies.
Quit spreading FUD, you probably work for Microsoft no doubt.
Smart Government does use Open Source
Barack Obama, one of the smartest men to hold the office in a while, has an intelligent Internet Communications team at his disposal, this team uses Open Source applications on several Federal Government websites, such as http://www.recovery.gov .
This hopefully will perhaps counteract some of the FUD being spread by "certain entities... cough Microsoft".
cough Microsoft...
Why must we be constantly reminded that every "bad" thing said about open source software emanates from Microsoft?
I think by this point in time we have all gotten the "Microsoft is Evil" message burned into our consciousness and really do not need the constant reinforcement.
RE: cough Microsoft
Yes, I agree with HarryB. The shortcomings of Microsoft really has nothing to do with the merits or lack thereof of open source.
As several responders have stated, there is no reason to believe that open source is any more or less secure than proprietary alternatives. Information security is a achieved through a combination of technologies, processes and business rules.
We are, however, getting completely off topic. My original point was that price alone is a terrible metric for determining the success or failure of a software implementation. The real question should be "is the implementation sufficient to meet the needs of the users?".
The web site purchased by the city in question may very well be sufficient to meet the needs of its users.
Websites in government
This has turned into an interesting thread with a lot of viewpoints expressed. There is the old tired debate of open source vs. propriety being discussed in some of the comments. I personally don't worry about whether the software is open source or propriety but instead recommend looking at whether the CMS meets requirements (functional, operational, work flow, user access control, etc). Only after the requirements have been met should the application's price tag and license be considered for the project. I follow the same line of thinking here as those expressed in Scott's comments.
While I'll agree with IT girl that security is important for government sites (actually any site), I disagree that software would be less secure just because it is open source. I can assure her open source in general is no less secure than propriety systems out there. Both companies and open source groups hold some responsibility in making sure their servers and software are secure. However, it has been my observation that the vast majority of sites found insecure are not because secure versions of the software isn't available. Rather many sites are found insecure because the site maintainers are not maintaining their sites with best practices and the latest available security patches provided.
In general, government organizations are no different than non-government groups in that they find advantage to using a mix of open source and propriety software as long as the software meets their requirements. I don't belive the executive branch of the US federal government would be using say Drupal for their Recovery.gov site if it hadn't met federal requirements for government sites.
As mentioned in comments by HarryB, and to a lesser extent Scott, the story here is that the city government got a steal for their site in not only the software but the development costs. Even when "free" software is used, most cities should expect development and support costs for such a site to be typically higher than the Albert Lea project. I would be interested to hear from Jeshua why he might have gone so low in the development costs to the site. I would suspect that Jeshua saw opportunities to profit from the government project that doesn't always translate to money (learning experience, publicity, civil duty). I've found myself occasionally in that same position when working for a non-profit site or a site for a "friend".
Finally a side note...a welcome to Scott and SkyBlueCanvas for being one of CMS Report's newest sponsor.
RE: Web Sites in Government
Bryan,
Great post. I agree 100%. It seems the real point we are both trying to make is that web sites are not about software, proprietary or open source. We, as web professionals, should be serving our clients' best interests by guiding through the entire process of planning, designing/developing and maintaining their sites. The most important question is "What is it your users hope to do/see/gain by using your site"?
Thanks for the welcome. And a great thread we have going here.
Scott
Amazing how much waste government creates
Wow, 50,000 for a local municipal government?! Wow! More government agencies need to start using wordpress.
I grew up in Fair Lawn, and I was simply shocked when I read that ALL the schools in my town pay a kings ransom to one web development company to use their CMS. Wordpress is infinitely superior!
cost of city website
Bryan, I know this thread is already a year old, but folks are continuing to find out about how Albert Lea used Wordpress and how little it cost. You mentioned you'd like to hear from me about why it cost as little as it did. The reasons you mentioned are correct: "I would suspect that Jeshua saw opportunities to profit from the government project that doesn't always translate to money (learning experience, publicity, civil duty)."
Furthermore, I'd like to add that I'm a HUGE fan of Wordpress and I really think more organizations would benefit from having Wordpress sites. Just the very fact that the City of Albert Lea now has a Wordpress site gives me a great deal of satisfaction. As a result of the city using Wordpress more and more and more sites in Albert Lea use Wordpress. And I'm not the only building them, either, which is the best news of all!
WordPress and Government
Jeshua, it's good to hear from you and I'm glad you're still having a lot of luck with WordPress for a Gov 2.0 portal. There are indeed some impressive sites that are running WordPress. Keep up the good work...