Open Source In State and Local
Government
The Background
• LEADR: Law Enforcement Automated Data
Replicator
• Large scale data collection and query tool
• Installed in 3 states
Background
• The project started in the low
country of South Carolina in 3
counties.
• There were 3 sheriff’s offices and
3 police departments initially
installed.
• Many police departments share
common Records Management
Systems (RMS)
• Initial system installed was a
closed source system.
The Switch to Open Source
• In 2003 grants were obtained to expand the
system to 21 Agencies
• Quotes were given by the closed source
vendor for a full license cost for each agency,
even though they had already developed the
adapter for a given RMS.
• A decision was made to Open Source and pay
for the adapter development once, and do an
install on common system.
Goals of the Open Source Project
• No additional cost to agencies
after development.
• Use common technologies and
data standards
• Make the software freely available
to Law Enforcement agencies.
• Use open source and open data
standards
• User and Operations manuals
provided to customers
The Move to the State level
• During the 2nd phase of the data sharing project
SLED wanted to pick the project up and move it
to a state wide level.
• Within 1 year 175 agencies were brought into
the system by publishing open data standards
and communication protocols to RMS vendors.
• A joint effort between agencies and multiple
companies brought everything on board quickly.
• The total cost of the project was $6.5 Million
dollars
Advantages of Open Source and the
Next State
• After the success of South Carolina, Tennessee
wanted to implement LEADR
• Project goals
– Bring in 250 agencies in the
first phase of the project.
– Replace DB IV based RMS fat
client with open sourced web
RMS system.
• Project was completed on time using the exiting
code base at a cost of $750k
Conclusion
• Moving to open and non-licensed based software
has saved the state millions of dollars in cost.
• SC spends on average $5k on support and
maintenance.
• Same philosophy applied to License Plate Reader
Warehouse (4 Installations)
• No cost to update the system to latest versions of
the software
• State money is spent on features, not licenses.