LocalGov Drupal - UK councils openly collaborating on a Drupal distribution with public funding

The LocalGov Drupal distribution will make it quicker and easier for UK councils to build a new publishing website in Drupal 9.

There are 408 councils across the UK who spend £millions of taxpayers money on publishing platforms and regularly produce very similar public facing websites. All councils regularly face the same challenges with web publishing such as GDPR compliance, accessibility legislation and COVID-19 response. At least 60 councils already use Drupal and are in a good position to share code and knowledge.

With funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) we are now working with a group of councils that have decided to actively work together on a shared Drupal codebase. Rather than attempting to create a one-size-fits-all solution, we are understanding the needs of various councils and creating components that can be mixed and matched to suit a wider variety of use cases.

Through working in the open and active collaboration, we believe that all councils can potentially:

- save time,
- save money,
- share knowledge,
- benefit from features developed by other councils,
- significantly improve experiences for the end user.

The session will cover:

- The story so far
- Motivations to share
- Motivations to work in the open
- Resistance: Why isn’t it already happening?
- How we’re changing things
- Live demo of our progress
- Roadmap for the future
- How to get involved

Background reading:

https://croydon.digital/2020/04/01/what-4-councils-learned-about-sharing-drupal-code/

https://croydon.digital/2020/05/30/multi-council-drupal-code-sharing-alpha-sprint-1-...

https://agile.coop/blog/local-gov-drupal-sprint-2-notes/

https://agile.coop/blog/local-gov-drupal-sprint-3-notes/

https://github.com/localgovdrupal/

Slides for the session: https://bit.ly/localgovdrupal-dc2020

*Session Materials*