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April 26, 2012 By Jessica Meyer Maria
But a lot of Drupal’s government growth is driven by the same reasons it is gaining private-sector popularity. “Due to its flexible, modular architecture, Drupal can be used for small to incredibly large builds. You can still meet niche needs while meeting the robust needs of the enterprise,” said Jacob Redding, executive director of the Drupal Association, which supports the Drupal project and maintains Drupal.org.
At its most basic level, the argument for Drupal tends to be financial. As an open source model, it spares user agencies from costly licensing fees and vendor lock-in. The resulting cost savings can be redistributed, adding value in other ways.
For public-sector users, in particular, Drupal offers several incentives. The community-driven nature of the platform allows government agencies to feed back into its development and growth, ultimately influencing how Drupal evolves. “That’s where open source really starts to pay dividends,” said Treehouse Agency’s Caccavano.
“Government agencies are in the business of serving the public. With open source in general, and Drupal in particular, agencies are able to achieve a bigger public benefit from a single investment,” said Kurt Voelker, CTO of Forum One Communications, the vendor behind a Drupal build for the International Programs Center of the U.S. Census Bureau and a recently awarded three-year Drupal project for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “With Drupal, agencies can share and reuse code, reducing labor costs, and drastically accelerate the pace with which every agency can innovate.”
Possibly the biggest hurdle to Drupal adoption in government — security — has all but eroded, said Jeff Walpole, CEO of Phase2 Technology, the vendorbehind the Georgia migration, House of Representatives and FEMA, and part of the team that completed Whitehouse.gov. With the White House’s adoption of Drupal, questions and criticisms around security and compliance no longer hold much sway. “Lack of understanding, fear, uncertainty, doubt, concerns around security — those things have all really dropped off in the last year,” he explained.
Drupal has made major strides on security and compliance issues, added Squishymedia’s Miller, with strict adherence to best practices, and access to all source code for security and auditing purposes. Still, he said, there is a level of flexibility and agility required to explore open source, which by nature is about free software and agile development.
“I was part of the White House New Media team when Whitehouse.gov moved to Drupal, and I experienced firsthand how it helped pave the way for other government entities to make similar transitions,” said Croft from the Energy Department. “The unique requirements of developing for government — from security to accessibility mandates — were wrestled with and subsequently resolved and helped make the case for a smooth adoption of Drupal at Energy, and for any other government entities, for that matter.”
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/policy-management/Why-Big-Sites-Run-Drupal.html
Isn't it a little bizarre to offer an article on "why big sites run Drupal" without mentioning any other CMS's except (briefly) Sharepoint? Why don't big sites run Joomla? When Whitehouse.Gov did their evaluation of open source CMS there were some valid reasons, but since then Joomla has become more enterprise ready. It remains a lot more user friendly and has a better UI without major modifiction. So almost all the arguments for Drupal apply to Joomla as well. The article seems like an ad for big Drupal consulting firms, without providing a real rationale for using it. I'm not really interested in proselytizing for Joomla but not so much as mentioning it in an article like this seems like a gift to those who actually do make a profit from Drupal.
Not a fan of Sharepoint and it is way too expensive. Drupal is good, I think Wordpress is better though...
powerfull cms drupal....... n great module.. cetek.web.id
Besides federal offices, a lot of UN organizations, agencies and programmes are using Drupal since quite a while. Find an overview here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/79093
3100 government sites using open source cms listed here http://bit.ly/lQmpes
You do also know there's a group of Drupal (and other open source projects) in government called Drupal4Gov. We've been around since October of 2010 and we work to share information, code and help with open source projects. We have held coding sprints, meetups and on May 18th, our first Government Drupal Day will be held at the Department of Commerce. Yesterday, we finalized the schedule and will have additional projects there, not just Drupal. But, my favorite piece for the day, is the all day Security room that will focus on open source projects and security requirements.
"In the private sector, to be sure, there is no advantage to giving a competing business any intellectual property, but in the public sector it’s the opposite." This is a misconception. If there weren't an advantage in the private sector companies like Google, IBM, Red Hat, Intel, AMD, and even Microsoft wouldn't be players. The advantage is that you can leverage an existing body of work that would cost billions of investment to replicate, in exchange for potentially providing a competitor with a minimal contribution. What you gain is less than what you give to your competitor. However, for the Government it is a pure gain.
While many open source competitors exist in the CMS arena there are also many proprietary commercial ventures touting their own special CMS (ref www.cmsmatrix.org/). I have been developing software for more than a few decades. A lot of the developers have a sign painted on their heads which says "only my code". One thing I have learned over the years is that changes in technology will change how you work and how you develop software. Machine code ans assembler gave way to higher languages. COBOL shops became structured shops. The mythical man month has been shown to be a major issue in modern distributed development shops. The SRS has given way to Agile development. Those who refused to grasp the changes that simplify the process, improve development production and automate or have the code pre-built and allow simple changes to bring a system online quickly will loose. From my meager perspective Drupal offers a massive advantage as a starting point for site development beyond simple content. We have used it to produce fully integrated systems relying on binary replication of data from client server applications to the web interfaces. It has been stated as an industry standard that a developer produces about 10 lines of useable code each day. Anything that prevents the reinvention of the wheel gets a hands up salute from me. We reviewed over 35 CMS systems, open source and commercially available, before we settled on Drupal 4 years ago and have not looked back. Producing CRM, RFP, Business Accounting Systems and much more with 30% of the estimated effort to do the same in a completely custom platform, or some of the other CMS platforms we researched. I still like Drupal, can't wait for Drupal 8.
No, it's not bizarre that an article entitled, "Why Big Sites Run Drupal" talks about Drupal. I will however answer your silly questions: "Why isn't Sharepoint mentioned?" - What person in their right mind would want to run overpriced proprietary software made by an monopolistic institution with a track record of shite software and a relationship with ALEC? "Why don't big sites run Joomla?" - Because joomla is a toy. Once you get beyond the shiny theme you'll realize you get one content type, no taxonomy, and a load of wonky useless proprietary extensions/modules/components/plugins named woojomjamjigglit that have no support network.
Why would Joomla be mentioned here when it hasn't been proven in this space? It is an undisputed fact that Drupal has risen to the challenges of large enterprise government web applications time and time again. It's a more powerful message to say that "Drupal HAS done that" as opposed to "Joomla COULD do that". They are different platforms with different communities, so they shouldn't be treated as one in the same. If the tables were turned I'd be saying the same thing but in Joomla's favor.
Wordpress isn't a CMS. It's a blogging tool that provides some CMS features. You can't do structured content, taxonomies easily.
And, the Drupal4Gov conference on Friday was 'open source' as well. It was totally free to all participants, funded by a lot of great vendors who have embraced Drupal and see that it is the platform of choice for many and want to see it continue to grow and mature. It was organized by both Government and private sectors members who volunteered their time to put the event together. It was a great opportunity to get some of the best drupalers together. Check out Drupal4Gov and get involved !