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Emergency Management and Open Source Software (February 2004)

Submitted by Gavin Treadgold on Sun, 2004-02-01 12:00
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What is Open Source and what are the benefits to Emergency Managers?

The spread of the Internet has given life to what some may say is a radical change in which software is developed. Traditionally, software development has been driven by commercial vendors that provide you with a software package that cannot be directly modified to suit your organisations needs. Yes, you may be able to customise it with options and configuration settings, but if it doesn't implement a function you need, there is usually little hope of getting it implemented. This is because you do not have access to the source code - the human readable code that tells the program how to operate. Open Source Software (OSS) changes all that.

What is Open Source Software? It is software that people can freely read, copy and modify the source code. This allows people to improve software, adapt it, and fix bugs. Additionally, this can often happen at a greater speed than conventional software development. But, the essential point with OSS is that you have the source code to the software, and the freedom to modify it, and redistribute your modifications.

The Internet has brought about the spread of Open Source Software because it provides a means of linking programmers and users around the world. The individuals come together on a project-by-project basis to develop software for a specific purpose.

So how can Emergency Managers benefit from Open Source Software?

Repair and Maintenance

Have you ever found a bug in your software, but you've had to wait until the vendor releases the next version of the software to fix it? Well, if you are using OSS, you can fix it yourself, or pay someone to fix it for you. Additionally, your fix then is released back to the community so all benefit from fixing the bug.

Licensing and Cost

Emergency Management Agencies often are not well funded, with some having to make do with whatever hardware and software comes their way. OSS provides an extremely cost-effective means of providing functionality. For example, if you receive Windows PC's with no office software, you could download and install OpenOffice.org - a suite of office productivity software for free, and it is also compatible with Microsoft Office files. Other day-to-day software solutions are available, including web-based groupware servers. Of course you can install the software as many times as you like - consider how expensive that would be with commercial software?

Extendibility

If you want a specific function added to your open source EM software, you can always pay a programmer to implement it for you. The real benefit of OSS comes when these additions are feed back to the community at large, so the community as a whole benefits, and spreads the cost of development. It also gives you a chance to support a programmer in you town, rather than across the country or the other side of the world!

Flexibility

Once again, with the source code in hand, you can customise the application to allow for internal consistency with jargon in your organisation. By changing the terminology used within the application, you can reduce the training requirements, and maintain consistency with other applications.

Economies of Scale

There is the potential for pooling of resources to achieve economies of scale. One EMA may not be able to afford to develop an EM application. However, by working with others and pooling resources, it would be possible to come up with enough funds to provide full time jobs for people to work on OSS - specifically an EM application (or suite of applications).

Speed

And finally, because you have the source code, you are not tied into the commercial vendors release schedule. Want that feature? Need a bug squashed? You can pay someone to do it right now.

At this stage however, there is little Open Source Software specifically designed for Emergency Management. But that is about to change. Some of the base functionality is the same across most organisations - such as a contact directory, basic message handling etc. Rather than having to build all this functionality from scratch however, we can take an existing stable OSS project (e.g. egroupware) that has some functionality required for emergency management, such as groupware which provides contact directories, calendars, user authentication etc, and then develop and integrate specific emergency management functions, such as alerts, and message handling. This translates to months not years to get a useable product into development.

Links to Popular Open Source Software and Information Sites