Open source programming for government provides an opportunity for cost savings, greater efficiency and flexibility, and greatly enhanced services to the public.

Currently, government generally seeks IT solutions through vendors and consultants.  For example, the State Board of Elections has used Catalyst Consulting to design and implement our statewide voter registration file.  When Champaign County conducted a technology assessment in 2007, consultants recommended that the county move away from our custom applications and move instead toward “packaged software.”

I doubt that our consultants put a whole lot of study into open source solutions.  Rather, they looked at our own stand alone development abilities as they put together a strategy for Champaign County’s IT future.

If they had looked at open source, they would have found much that makes sense for government.

To begin, government is not in competition with anyone (or shouldn’t be).  Unlike the private sector, governments have no vested interest in denying cost effective solutions to others.  In fact, in many areas, government actually has an interest in intergovernmental cooperation.  For example, on a host of issues relating to property taxes, the data from Champaign County is valuable to other governments.  Additionally, the changes to that data made by other governments could be seamlessly provided to the County if the two organizations shared software.

Next, collaboration on software solutions can only lead to more productivity and efficiency.  This collaboration should be an ongoing process.  What often happens currently is that a few units of government identify a need and a vendor or consultant responds to that need.  The software developed hopefully meets that need at that time for those organizations.  However, we don’t live in a static environment.  Other needs arise, additional best practices are identified, and technologies change.  When circumstances change, packaged software solutions are often incapable of responding to them, either because of a lack of skill or finances or because companies want you to pay for a total upgrade rather than a modest change to your current system.

When you purchase a software solution, you’re taking a chance on whether the company you are working with is going to be around in a decade and whether they are still going to be able to meet your changing needs.  Open source eliminates this very real problem for local governments and replaces that problem with a dynamic process to improve every software solution by bringing the best in government together on an ongoing basis.

On the financial side, open source solutions will save money.  Even with a modest amount of collaboration, medium to large size governments will see savings.  The more who join in, the greater the savings.  For smaller units of government, it will be less about saving because many of them aren’t even looking for software solutions to some of the issues.  Instead, what it means is that these smaller units will be able to take advantage of efficiencies that were before only available to the largest units of government.

Additional millions in savings will be realized as hefty licensing fees go away.  Further, software vendors often force unnecessary yet expensive upgrades onto their clients with the very real threat that they’ll cease to service clients who don’t upgrade.  Governments pay for the upgrade and often pay for transitional training necessary to go to the next software version.

For citizens, open source solutions mean more responsiveness.   Currently, the needs and desires of the community are held hostage to the skills of a software vendor.  With open source, governments can go out and find the person with the necessary skills to implement what the community wants.  In fact, when governments fail, the citizens themselves can find the person.

Next week, I’ll write about the impediments that have prevented the benefits listed here from coming to fruition.

My work with relational databases goes back to 1991.  At that time, I primarily worked the political end of database management and programming.  When I became County Clerk, I brought those skills to the office.  Over time, we’ve developed a number of database applications that have allowed us to reduce staff while increasing our level of service to the public.

At this time, we have no proprietary software solutions in our office, except for the program that designs and counts our ballots and an add on for scanning, imaging, and OCRing  documents.  Our property tax program is designed and maintained by the County IT department and also serves the Treasurer’s office and the Supervisor of Assessments Office.  Our applications for voter registration, notaries, assumed business names, births, marriages and a variety of other items have been designed within our office.

There is no shortage of software vendors for government administration.  Many of the products are high quality, but my experience has been that most are overpriced and lack the flexibility that our organization desires.  We purchased a marriage license program in my first year as County Clerk that was serviceable, but doesn’t even come close to matching the efficiency of our current system.  I have examined a number of the voter registration programs that exist.  I saw only one that impressed me and its price tag was a million dollars, not including the ongoing maintenance and licensing costs.

We’ve developed a system in house that mirrors much of the best of what we’ve seen in other systems.  It’s paid for, no licensing fees, and it gives us additional flexibility and the ability to make modifications based on future needs.  We are currently making upgrades to the system thanks to a federal grant under the Election Administration Commission’s Data Collection Grant. While we will be compliant with the grant requirements by the end of the year, we anticipate continued development of our system until March of next year.  Because we develop using SQL Server for our data and Visual Studio for our front end, our software would not fall under the open source umbrella, but the benefits from the software are much like what you’d get in the open source environment.

Because our system is developed within our office, we can make modifications more quickly and at a lower cost than other systems.  As the federal government and states begin to look at more on line digital government solutions, the need to modify current software solutions will be even more important.

Going it alone, so to speak, is a challenge.  The dividends are substantial, but there is no doubt that it can be very time consuming in the short run.  It would be difficult to quantify the time I have put into software development, but it certainly is measured in the thousands of hours.  Few County Clerk Offices in the state or country have those types of resources available.

That’s the background that brings me to one of the more positive notes out of the Democracy Index (a book I’ve spent considerable time panning).  Gerken makes a call that is long overdue.  It is for open source solutions to government technology issues.

The preferred method for most governments to address their technology issues is to find a solution off the shelf or to pay a consultant to put together a solution or to do a hybrid of the two.  All are costly, and all are legendary for not delivering a product that is vibrant, dynamic and flexible.

Here in Champaign county we are seeing it in the criminal justice area.  We have paid millions for a software solution that already is showing its age and limitations.  We are having similar issues with our payroll system.

Both the criminal justice software and payroll software are functions that every county in America has to deal with.  It is incomprehensible to think that it couldn’t be done at a far lower cost (with likely better results) by collaboration among those counties in an open source environment.

Which brings us to open source software whereby the code for the program is available to all users and can be modified in a way that suits a particular organization.  Modifications to the original code are made available to all users.  There are no licensing fees and no impediments to developing the software to meet the changing needs of the organization.

My next posts will examine these questions.  What are the benefits to open source?  What are the factors that impede those solutions?  How do we make the way for open source solutions in the future?

I just voted today absentee.  While the law allows election officials to vote absentee this is the first time I’ve done it since I’ve been County Clerk.  I had a tough time getting away at the February primary and just didn’t want to take the chance this time.

Anyway, I was fully informed on the ballot and voted in 1 minute, 31 seconds.

Please please please, get your specimen and become informed and show up prepared!

The free tools available on the web are truly amazing.  One that we’ve added recently to our site is Google Translate.  There was a time where I was conversationally fluent in Spanish, but those days are past.  So it’s a little tough for me to really evaluate the quality of the translation offered here.  Regardless, this is certainly an improvement over nothing and gives us one other way to reach out to the many different ethnic groups that avail themselves of the services of our office.

I’d love to hear comments from anyone who is fluent in any of these languages.

Minutes for the County Board meeting aren’t posted until approved at the next County Board meeting.  But here is the roll call for the Management Performance Associates contract that was approved last night.

YES (21)

Chris Doenitz , John Jay, Larry Sapp, Ron Bensyl, Stan James, Kevin Hunt, Brad Jones, Jonathan Schroeder, Alan Nudo, Steve Moser,   Stanley S. O’Connor, Claudia Gross, Michael Richards, Matthew Gladney, Janet Anderson, Carrie Melin, Pius Weibel, Tom Betz, Brendan McGinty, Barbara Wysocki, Steve Beckett

NO (4)

Carol Ammons, Lloyd Carter, Jr. , Lorraine Cowart, Jennifer K. Putman

I’d like to thank those who have posted comments and questions as well as the readers of the blog.

I also want to let everyone know that I will attempt to answer all the questions that have been put out there, including those that have been sprinkled within the comments of various posts. I have many things to cover initially and want to methodically work my way through them. As I do I’ll be able to go through and address other issues. Once I make it through all the issues that have been offered so far, I’ll have another open posting time to give people a chance to ask about other topics of concern.

I really appreciate the opportunity this forum has given me and my office. I also appreciate the positive and respectful nature of the posters here. I think the blog is off to a great start!

There are a number of things that I’d like to post about in the next few weeks including new legislation and new voting equipment. However, I think an initial step might be to open up to readers any suggestions of ideas they would like me to examine in this forum. I’ve already seen some comments about campus voting and that will certainly be one idea that we will explore here.

Please post suggestions of issues for me to address. Make them specific and talk about specific examples. It does little good to post a vague question like “Why is it so tough to vote?” I’ll let posters know if a suggestion isn’t specific enough for me to address, so that the poster can follow up with a more specific issue.

I’m looking forward to some interesting discussion topics.

Welcome to the Champaign County Clerk blog. I think this a natural outgrowth of our efforts to communicate with the public about election issues. It also is a great way to solicit input from the public about our election process with the hope of continuing to improve it.

This blog will focus on changes in election laws, improvements to how we conduct elections in Champaign County, and educating the public about current topics in elections here locally. I think this has an opportunity to be a great forum for our community that will lead to greater understanding of elections, and greater participation in the process as a whole.

In starting this blog, it is imperative that I make everyone aware that blogging can not be, and will not be, the focus of my day. While I will monitor the blog routinely, if it becomes something that takes too much of my time, I will simply not be able to continue with it.

I have great faith in our community and feel that the blog and those who post here will become a valuable component to an active and knowledgeable electorate. I’ll look forward to the comments of people as we move forward into the blog world.