DrupalCon Rotterdam started on Monday 28 September with a day set aside for the public sector. LocalGov Drupal, which hosted it, called it “the inaugural Government Summit” at a DrupalCon Europe. It was scheduled from 9am to 6pm at the Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre WTC Rotterdam.
This is a summary of the published programme, not a report from the room. We will add links to recordings and write-ups as the organisers publish them.
Digital sovereignty came first
The opening keynote, “The Struggle for Digital Sovereignty in Government”, was given by Teun van der Vorm, General Director of DICTU, the IT service provider for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and other government organisations.
It was followed by a panel chaired by Sachiko Muto, Chair of OpenForum Europe, on a question that will be familiar to anyone who has written a business case for open source: “If digital sovereignty depends on open source, who is responsible for sustaining the ecosystems behind it?” The listed panellists came from DICTU, the Open Source Program Office at BZK, Civic Actions and the European Commission.
Accessibility and procurement
Mike Gifford of Civic Actions was listed to speak on “The Accessible Digital Commons: Aligning Government Procurement to Sustain Open Source”. The abstract says the talk would use Lighthouse scan data from EU government websites to show where they fall short, and argue that governments should treat open source as a digital commons and use procurement to fund accessibility work in it.
Sessions from the UK
- LocalGov Drupal. Will Callaghan and Finn Lewis on how the project grew, in the words of the programme, “from two councils sharing a Drupal codebase to 70 councils actively collaborating”, and on the co-owned Open Digital Co-operative that funds and sustains it. The abstract mentions growing interest from France, Austria and other countries.
- Luton’s move to LocalGov Drupal. Jayvik Patel of Luton Council on the business case, procurement and governance, building the team and lessons learned.
- Quorum. Justine Pocock of Chicken on an open source committee management system being built by the LocalGov Drupal community, with Hammersmith & Fulham Council as lead funder. The programme says it will cover agenda creation, document management, workflow approvals, public publication and compiled PDF packs.
There was also a session from Klara Binon of VDAB, the Flemish public employment service, on using an existing Drupal intranet to share location data instead of buying a separate tool.
The afternoon
After lunch the programme listed a second panel, “Can local government build and sustain the digital commons it needs?”, chaired by Bert Boerland of the Dutch Drupal Association. The panellists included Phil Rumens, Principal Technologist at GDS Local. The rest of the day was given to unconference sessions and workshops on topics chosen by the people there.
Following up
The summit page points to a #government-summit channel on Drupal Slack for continuing the discussion, and to a mailing list for the outcomes. If you work on public sector Drupal and could not travel, those are the places to watch.
The next DrupalCon Europe is much closer to home: Edinburgh, in October 2027.
