PloneGov : Newport News wins the 2008 Havlick award
Newport News, a city of 180,000 inhabitants in Virginia (USA), is the leader of the Open e-Gov open source project, one of PloneGov subcommunities. Following Paris, Lisbon, Brussels and Dublin, this new award becomes the 5th nomination in less than a year for the PloneGov initiative and collaborating Public Organizations.
News from Zea Partners
The Open eGov project was recognized by the Alliance for Innovation as the winner of the 4th Annual J. Robert Havlick Award for Innovation in Local Government Award. 82 submissions were received by the Alliance for innovation for these two prestigious awards, which are presented annually to further encourage innovation and recognize excellence in local government.
The
is an international nonprofit local government association with a mission to network innovative local governments and private companies to bring about cost reductions, service improvements, and productivity increases in the public sector through technologies, processes, and ideas. It is a network of innovative governments and partners pursuing solutions which can transform communities. They seek out innovative practices, challenge existing business models, exchange information and acquire knowledge, and offer products and services which help members perform at their best.
The Alliance has proven to be an inventive resource for local governments and reached out to the International City/County Management Association (
) and Arizona State University (
) and its School of Public Affairs.
The
developed
, a web software application which is available to any other local government and it is offered free of charge. They are creating a Plone based collaborative software ecosystem, where government organizations, non-profits and the private sector work together to share the cost of enhanced capabilities. The larger the community that shares the application, the more potential benefits derived by each participant. Improvements to the software may be provided or funded by any organization. All participating organizations benefit from any one’s contributions at no additional cost and with no restrictions. The objective is to deliver on-line web services to citizens most effectively and efficiently by reducing or eliminating the duplication of effort between localities through sharing and collaboration.
This recognition shows that this collaborative initiatives have merit and are applicable in a broad sense to local governments everywhere. The award will be presented at the 2008 Transforming Local Government (TLG) conference in Greenville, SC, USA on June 5th, 2008.
Newport News, bringing a fifth nomination to PloneGov
The City of Newport News is also member of the award winning
initiative, an international open source collaborative project that aims to share best practices and software between public organizations. Over 70 European, North and South American and African Public organizations already participate in the project.