The White House recently announced that it has moved to Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) to power the WhiteHouse.gov website. This is great news as it legitimizes the use of open source within the federal space. Federal CIOs should realize that most of the web is powered by open source software including premier web properties such as Google and Facebook.
WhiteHouse.gov is now powered by Drupal.
The new White House system runs on what is called a LAMP technology stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). The LAMP stack is all open source. It is widely considered secure, offers high performance and is stable. The White House chose Red Hat Linux as their supported distribution, and for enterprise search they are using Apache Solr. After the story was announced via the AP, Tim O’Reilly blogged the details of the technology choices and the reasons for making the switch.
More than just security, though, the White House saw the opportunity to increase their flexibility. Drupal has a huge library of user-contributed modules that will provide functionality the White House can use to expand its social media capabilities, with everything from super-scalable live chats to multi-lingual support. In many ways, this is the complement to the Government as Platform mantra I’ve been chanting in Washington. When you build a vibrant, extensible platform, others add value to the foundation you establish; when you join such a platform, you get the benefit of all those features you didn’t have to develop yourself.
Interestingly, Chris Wilson writing for Slate, has a different take:
I wish Drupal and the White House nothing but happiness. But I have a feeling this story ends badly. If the administration had conducted a few polls among the swing demographic of Web site administrators, it would have realized that Drupal is pocked with political landmines. To wit: Drupal represents everything the Obama team does not want to project.
Unfortunately, Wilson doesn’t offer any alternatives. The only real open source choices in my mind are Drupal, WordPress, Joomla! or Alfresco.
Many large organizations use WordPress MU to engage with their audience.
WordPress started strictly as blog software but has evolved nicely into a Web CMS. Many large organizations use WordPress MU such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN and 10 (UK Prime Ministers site) to name only a few examples. My feeling is that for something as complex as the WhiteHouse.gov, WordPress does not have the robust features needed for enterprise-class CMS. Although it should be noted that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) runs on WordPress.
Joomla! Is popular but has the reputation of not being secure enough. Which leaves us with Alfresco, an enterprise CMS that is used by the likes of FOX to power Fox.com. Alfresco uses J2EE and Java instead of Apache and PHP. Alfresco is built by a team of original leading members from Documentum® and Vignette with 15 years experience in Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Alfresco could have been a real viable alternative although the number of qualified developer partners is rather limited compared to Drupal.
My take on all of this is that the White House made a solid decision in choosing Drupal. What I would love to see is for GSA to offer Drupal as a platform for agencies that need a robust CMS but don’t want to manage their own LAMP infrastructure. Along with Drupal if GSA would offer WordPress as a platform (with agencies having their own unique URL), that would be heaven. Hopefully, GSA CIO Casey Coleman is working on this platform as a services (PAAS).
Neil Bonner works in the information technology field as a manager for applications development at the Transportation Security Administration. His focus is on innovation and collaboration for internal and external audiences. 
neil [at] michelangelo.com
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On November 5th, I was a speaker at GOSCON DC, Government Open Source Conference for Information Technology leadership. It was very well attended and the information was terrific. There is a lot going on in the federal government using Open Source software.
More info at: http://goscon.org/ or search using the #goscon tag on Twitter.