Collaborative development of non-strategic applications.  It's a mouth full and probably the biggest opportunity for the CIO to reduce the costs and increase the value of IT within their organizations.  There have been a number of successful collaborative software development initiatives using an open source development model.  Some examples: of course there is Linux which is governed by what was the Open Source Development Lab in Beaverton, Oregon (now The Linux Foundation ), and the Eclipse Foundation an organization providing a universal tool set for development of open source software, and one of my favorites the Kuali Foundation a consortium of Universities that are developing, sustaining and evolving a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meet their financial, research, student community and infrastructure needs.

What each of these initiatives represent: major technology companies (Linux), software development companies (Eclipse) and universities (Kuali), is the realization that it is in their individual and collective interests to work collaboratively using an open source development model to create software applications that do not have strategic value to any of the individual participants.  In this climate, a new company has emerged in Beaverton Oregon called the Collaborative Software Initiative (www.csinitiative.com).  CSI is looking to extend the collaborative software development model in both the public and private sectors and the opportunities seem almost endless.

A prime target market is the social service programs that are administered by the Federal, State and Local governments in the United States.  For example, the Federal government funds a health insurance program for the poor called Medicaid.  The program is administered by the States who enroll their citizens in Medicaid and pay their benefits to the health care service providers.  The program is administered under federal rules and regulations and is therefore largely identical in all 50 states.  Moreover the software that has been developed over the years to administer Medicaid is in the public domain because it was largely funded through federal dollars and is therefore available to form the foundation of an open source initiative.

With all this in mind, Oregon is in the process of implementing a new, modern system to administer their Medicaid program at a price tag of over $70 million.  If all 50 States spent this amount every 7 to 10 years to keep their applications up to date, the overall price tag would be $3.5 billion to the tax payers and since the Federal government funds these systems at 90%, their cost would be $3.2 billion.  This seems to be ample incentive to have all 50 states come together in a consortium to apply the proven open source development model to create a single universal system for the administration of the Medicaid program.

Hopefully this will happen in my life time,

William A. Crowell, Principal
Magellan Associates, LLC
www.magellan-associates.com

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