How the Open Digital Cooperative is saving local governments millions with open source tech

The Open Digital Cooperative (ODC) has saved UK and Irish taxpayers millions of dollars by providing local council members with common technology and enabling them to pool expertise and resources.

The not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder tech cooperative was set up in January 2023 to run, and ensure the financial sustainability of, the LocalGov Drupal project. LocalGov Drupal consists of a community of developers, content designers and local council digital leaders who work together to enhance the open source website publishing platform. Maria Young, an ODC Director and Developer for supplier member the Agile Collective, explains:

We've got two big products: LocalGov Drupal, which gives councils a starter kit to develop a website based on the open-source distro, Drupal. People can install it and get the bare bones of a website, and there are other features they can pick and choose from too. 

A separate project we also ran was LocalGov Microsites to help councils manage them more effectively in their ecosystem. We found many councils had hundreds of them, which all needed hosting and infrastructure, and were causing governance problems. So, this product enables you to spin up multiple microsites and have more control.

The ODC comprises 56 councils and 19 cooperative and commercial suppliers, which are either subscribers or members. Subscribers play a guidance role and meet on an ad-hoc basis but are consulted on all major decisions.

They pay an annual amount to ensure ODC is sustainable, but are subject to no license fees. For councils, the sum is based on the size of their local population. For suppliers, payment relates to how many full-time equivalent staff they employ.

Those that wish to be more active in the community can also apply to become members, a role that comes with legal responsibilities. Members are eligible to be considered for a seat on the board, where they help with governance and setting strategy. To achieve this status, suppliers need to work with Drupal and come with a council recommendation. Young explains the setup:

The coop doesn't have any employees. We contract out roles on a fixed term basis, and if any need to be filled, we put them out to the subscriber base as that's our preference. Also, if specific work is required, we may let it out as a standalone piece. 

So, the Agile Collective that I work for won the developer role and that's the contract we deliver - which is mostly me and my colleague, Stephen [the Development Lead]. But it could be any of us as we're not hired as individuals.

Cooperative benefits for Wirral Council

On the local authority side of the equation, one active coop member is Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council in the northwest of England. Jamie Dixon is the Council's Digital Experience Lead for Digital, Technology and Data and is also an ODC board member. He explains how the Council's involvement came about:

We wanted to move to Drupal 8 from version 7, so our web agency Webcurl recommended we look at ODC. We met with Will [Callaghan, the coop's Product Lead and board member] and the others in September 2021 and liked what we saw with councils helping each other out. So, we went to a few meetups and were impressed by their energy and enthusiasm. 

In 2022, we started moving our main council website to LocalGov Drupal, went live in 2023, and a couple of months later joined the coop. And we've definitely seen the benefits in terms of shared knowledge, experience and resources.

As the Council has only one developer, the coop provides it with access to additional support, an understanding of what other councils are doing, and what is or isn't feasible, Dixon adds:

Local authorities are all very similar and share the same problems and challenges. So, talking to others in the same boat and being able to access a regular stream of new features that we wouldn't have the time and resources to develop ourselves in-house is very beneficial. 

Day-to-day interaction takes place on a Slack group and gives us access to the knowledge and experiences of thousands of other local authorities, suppliers, and open source experts, so it's an excellent source of help and support. On average, councils chip in maybe two or three hours per month and get about 40 hours of resource.

Although it may be complex to figure out exactly how much money the Council has saved by taking this approach, Dixon says:

We've definitely saved money. In 2014-2015, we were able to drop most of our work for six months and focus on upgrading the website, but this time we had no dedicated project team. So, working with the coop sped everything up as we didn't need to do our own development but could just get things off-the-shelf. We could also be confident they'd been tested by local authority people that understood the sector rather than having to go to Drupal directly. This meant we didn't have to explain why the work needs to be done in a certain way, as you usually do with a supplier.

A different way of working

But there are downsides too – which is why Wirral Council has chosen to stay with its commercial web agency too. Dixon explains:

With a commercial supplier, the good thing is if you need something delivered by the end of tomorrow, they will because it's written into the contract. We were worried about not getting the same level of responsiveness with a coop - although often you can get the information you need on Slack in a couple of hours. 

But if something's time-critical, we usually go to Webcurl as we can be more certain they'll deliver things quickly. If it's less time-sensitive or we have a more general question, then we'll put it out to the group and ask for advice. So, the coop's a really good supplement, but it's still useful to have knowledge in-house, or with a contracted supplier.

Webcurl will also be brought in to handle larger, more complex items of work that the coop may not have the resources to manage, Dixon says:

If they're smaller jobs or we need a bit of help, we'll ask the coop, but we're finding our way a bit on when to use who. Quite often the coop is involved in developing specific pieces of work as they have a number of different subgroups focusing on different areas, so it's also good for project work.

As to how ODC's core products are developed and managed, such decisions are made by the coop's Product and Technical Groups based on a collective roadmap. This is updated annually in collaboration with council members and lays out the "missions" or big projects for the year.

The Product Group is responsible for activities, such as setting technical direction and governance. The Technical Group, on the other hand, is accountable for leading on development processes and coding standards and creating documentation for new features. But there are other routes for developing new functionality too, Young says:

Work is distributed through paid roles, the open source community, and various coop groups and meet-ups [communities of practice]. But people can also bring new features into the ecosystem in a number of ways. A supplier may build new functionality for a council and then give it back to the community for everyone to use. 

Sometimes various councils get together to work out how to build something. They may bring in a supplier and share the costs. Individuals might develop something in their spare time because they're interested in it, or a supplier may fund an open source contributor's time.

But this complexity does take time to understand, points out Dixon:

When we started, I had to put some effort into understanding how it all works, who to speak to and the like. The monthly meetings helped but there are different subgroups, content, access and project groups, and you need to take time to understand them. 

At first you feel like everyone knows each other and knows what to do, but it's not like that really. So, it's a learning curve, but the more you put in, the more you get out.

My take

While working as part of a cooperative like ODC offers a lot of benefits, I think Dixon's advice here about getting involved is sound:

There might be a perception that being involved will take a lot of time but, in reality, you're just doing work you'd be doing anyway while contributing to other councils too. But ask at the start how their communications channels work. It's also important to go in with your eyes open and understand what's expected of you as it's quite a different way of working.