RedTurtle, main supporter of the Italian branch of PloneGov, promotes a business model based on reuse of free software

PloneGov, a multi-awarded world wide initiative, for two times in a row a finalist at the European e-Government Awards, is perhaps the most successful experience - on a global scale - in collaborative software ecosystems for the Public Sector.
With its galaxy of sub-communities in four continents and twenty countries, PloneGov proved capable to unite the efforts and the experience of Public Organizations, cities and local governments faced with the same situations and challenges in terms of e-Government.
RedTurtle, presently providing Plone expertise to more than half the Italian participant organizations, and its Customers, including the Emilia-Romagna Region, the City of Modena and several Chambers of Commerce, promoted the birth of the national branch PloneGov Italia.
All the participant organizations use a common technology, the free CMS Plone. PloneGov provides both a software repository for sharing several different solutions based on Plone, and a mind pool where any organization from the Public Sector can offer or receive - for free - reusable Plone solutions, expertise and know how from the very same people that designed and developed those best-practice solutions, fit for Public Administrations.

Reuse in everybody's grasp

PloneGov takes advantage of the technical support by ZEA Partners, a global network of SMBs, available when needed. Thanks to this support and to the active involvement of both the PloneGov member organizations and of the SMBs in the Plone community, PloneGov is constantly growing along with the number of solutions available. RedTurtle and the other SMBs, including RedTurtle, may help even the smallest organizations willing to engage in reuse, a good practice usually precluded to those lacking an internal IT staff.
Based on a powerful, enterprise Content Management System, the PloneGov initiative can ...

• ... include groups and Organizations at risk of exclusion in eGovernment practices;
• ... improve user segmentation in e-Government services;
• ... provide invaluable experiences, like those from the awarded best practice, Health Atlas Ireland, for inclusive e-Government in healthcare;
• ... provide multichannel delivery services and eGovernment services at the different levels of the value chain;
• ... give autonomy to the Public Organizations in all the lifecycle of design, production, delivery, access and use of inclusive e-Government services;
• ... boast an "Inclusive by design" approach, thanks to an architecture designed for accessibility by users, including those sensorially impaired, and for crawlability by search engine spiders;
• ... leverage Plone to market, target and promote e-Government services for specific disadvantaged groups.