The Swiss state of Vaud is located in the southwestern part of the country and has a population of 657,000. The capital is Lausanne.
Governments at all levels are increasing turning to e-government- the use of information technology to exchange information and deliver services. By providing citizens and government workers with electronic access to the information they need, the result is improved efficiency, increased convenience, and greater accessibility of public services.
In Switzerland, as in many countries, state and federal governments are aggressively pursuing e-government initiatives powered by open source software as a flexible and cost-effective alternative to proprietary software. This was the direction taken by the State of Vaud in its search for an open source solution to provide access and management of millions of electronic documents. A key requirement was a system flexible enough to support all branches of state government and integrate with the legacy applications used by individual departments.
Based on the recommendation of its IT experts, the state selected the Optaros E-Government solution powered by the Alfresco open source content management system.
The Optaros e-Government solution powered by Alfresco is an integrated content management solution based on reusable services that can be readily adapted for the needs of different government departments.
The State of Vaud's IT department now offers the scalable and flexible platform to the departments and agencies that are its internal clients. The e-Government solution incorporates extensive search capabilities: including phonetic search, category navigation and search, OR/AND/NOT search functions, and a tree view to assist with navigation. The entire offering can be accessed directly from the applications used by different government departments.
"Open Source is not the solution, but there is no solution without Open Source," says Trong-Thanh Do, Director of IT Engineering, for the State of Vaud. "We now have a powerful enterprise content management platform that can be reused and extended for different departments." One of the most valuable features is the ability to create new services that generalize requests from individual users or departments to address similar challenges faced by other branches of government. This was the origin of the phonetic search capability described above. The service was requested by users as an extension to the original assembly, and is now available as an integral part of the solution. This ability to extend a solution to meet emerging needs is one of the key advantages of open source software.
The initial rollout supports the state's tax department, providing 750 users with integrated document management and searching tools from within their current tax assistance application. Tax forms and related documents are stored in the 100 GB system, which is expected to grow as additional documents are added and more users come online. Implementation is underway for a second department, supporting an additional 1,300 users (including authorized users from other departments). Rollout for a third department is in the planning stages and expected in late 2007 or early 2008. The State of Vaud is also planning to use Alfresco to publish official documents through its Internet web site by the end of 2007. Ultimately, the state aims to open the platform for citizen access with easy-to-use Internet-based services.
The Optaros e-Government solution provides the State of Vaud with a cost-effective reusable platform for document management that interoperates with current applications and can be adapted as needed for different departments. The solution also meets the enterprise-class requirements of high availability, scalability, and security that government operations demand. These are some of the reasons why governments across Europe and many other countries are turning to open source solutions. The ultimate benefit: improved service to the public at lower cost.
"The Optaros e-Government solution will be widely integrated across state departments and is a key step in our eGovernment strategy," adds Marie-Noelle Baechler, Head of Reusable Solutions. "The State of Vaud strongly encourages inter-state partnerships that enhance the sharing of infrastructure. As part of this effort, we plan to make the platform available to other state organizations in Switzerland as well as at the federal level."