Date: Monday 16th April 2012
Location: Capgemini, 40 Holborn Viaduct, London

Drupal For Government was the first of an annual series of events showcasing high profile British Government projects built with Drupal, and briefing the Drupal community on how the Government’s commitment to using Open Source software is being implemented.

Below are a series of interviews from the event, full presentations coming soon.

Introduction To Drupal

The evening started with Robert Castelo providing attendees new to Drupal with an overview of the software, it’s community, and the advantages of Open Source in general.

Running A Perfect Government Project

Paul Jenkins, New Media Manager at Ofsted then presented on the launch of Parent View, a high profile project which was under intense media scrutiny and fraught with challenges. Paul described how the Digital team at Ofsted, in collaboration with Drupal specialist iO1, succeeded in delivering this innovative concept on-time, within budget, and without issues.

Building Data.gov

The second talk from a Government project manager came from Evan King, Team Lead at the Cabinet Office, who presented a case study on building one of the most famous Drupal sites in the world - Data.gov. Evan covered everything from the stack and deployment to CKAN integration.

Government Open Source Action Plan

Next Tariq Rashid, Lead Architect of IT Technology Solutions & Assurance at the Home Office gave a great presentation on Government strategy on Open Source, it’s implementation and challenges. Tariq works to support wider Government adoption of Open Source software and open standards, and attendees welcomed the opportunity to put their questions to him in the Q&A session that followed his talk.

Care Quality Commission And Drupal

Dave Stuart, Head of Technology and Director at Axis12, gave the last presentation of the evening - a case study of deployment, configuration management, and search on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) project. Dave is a veteran Drupal developer and had many good practises to share with the audience.

Organisers

The event was organised by Robert Castelo of Code Positive, Fintan Gavin from iO1, and Karen Leech and Django Beatty from Capgemini. Thank you to Anthony Albertyn from Binary Brand for video, IXIS and Code Positive for sponsoring food and drink, and Capgemini for hosting the event.

Platinum Sponsors

Capgemini

Capgemini is running some of the largest and most advanced Drupal programmes in the world, and an increasing number all the time. Capgemini is hiring new Drupal talent at all levels - to find out more please contact django.beatty@capgemini.com or alexandra.dema@capgemini.com

Gold Sponsors

IXIS

Ixis are a Drupal development, support and hosting agency with over 8 years experience. Our Drupal clients include, the British Council, Times Education, The Association of Corporate Treasurers, Barclays and UK General. www.ixis.co.uk