Whole-of-government/whole-of-organisation digital platforms
Salsa has created a model for developing complete digital platforms that organisations can use to consolidate disparate websites and drive digital transformation. To date, we’ve developed several large-scale platforms, including one for a university client, the Federal Government’s GovCMS and the Victorian Government’s Single Digital Presence (SDP).
Our blueprint for these large-scale platforms consists of four technical elements:
- An open source platform
- Open source applications including a CMS
- An open source design library
- Tooling
On top of this technical layer we have four streams that run across the technical elements:
- The program
- Governance
- Services
- Community
This blog focuses on how to create and maintain a thriving community around a whole-of-government or whole-of-organisation open source digital platform.
The importance of community
The open source ethos is built on sharing and community. And when it comes to new, large-scale digital platforms, an active community is essential for adoption at scale. So how does a platform achieve community engagement? With a deliberate open source community engagement plan underpinned by an open source community engagement blueprint.
What a successful open source community looks like
A successful open source community builds a self-sustaining program that doesn’t rely on one party to build something great, but rather provides a vehicle for contributions by community participants. This means:
- Contributions increase
- Momentum is built
- Participants feel included
- Re-use, sharing and success become normal
- Traditional/conservative attitudes change
- Participants win
- The end user wins
- Barriers to innovation are lowered
Savings from the reduced costs of running a large-scale digital platform with an open source community can be invested in innovation and user needs rather than being spent on base infrastructure, primary components, approaches and other commoditised artefacts.
In ‘return’ the community gives back to the platform through contributions. If the barrier to adoption is low, savings are significant and real, and a roadmap exists of prioritised enhancements. Participants can contribute to the platform for the greater good of the community.
Once a community is established it will gather momentum.
How to build a community around a digital platform
A community engagement blueprint can help drive a community’s growth. Salsa’s community engagement blueprint sets out specific areas to focus on that will increase awareness and ultimately drive contributions.
There are 7 aspects of our community engagement blueprint:
- Planning
- Awareness
- Partnerships
- Education
- Places
- Tools and processes
- Contributions
How long will it take?
It’s difficult to say how long it will take for a thriving community to be up and running around a new open source digital platform. Hopefully this blueprint helps to give you ideas of the benefit of the open source community approach, and how you can start to create your own community around a new digital platform.
Platforms in action
For more information on whole-of-government and whole-of-organisation open source digital platforms, please see these related Salsa blogs: