Entando Meets Open Data

A new post from Entando Universe about "Entando and Open Data":

"Open Data has become the trend of the moment. Social networks, blogs, magazines on the web speak about about Open Data.
But first of all we need to define what is open data:
“Open Data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.” as defined by the Open Definition.
The full Open Definition gives precise details as to what this means:

• Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet.
• Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
• Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute - there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups.

Governments have a broad range of different types of data and most of the government data is public by law, and therefore could be made open and made available for others to use. For this reason Open Data is often associated with Open Government."

Read the full blog post from Entando Universe

Entando in minutes video

In this video we are going to show you how to create easily a portal using the Entando platform.

With a few commands on a terminal you can access both administration consoles (the standard one or the other oriented to Web Accessibility ) from your browser of choice. The administration area permits you to manage Users, Users Roles, Users Groups, Multilingual, attachements, CMS, ...

Entando & Rest APIs

Just uploaded the slides presented by Rinaldo Bonazzo at Devoxx2012 conference about Entando & Rest API: "The advantage of Using Rest API’s in Portal Platforms to extend the reach of the portal"

bit.ly/V8LKyU

Retail can benefit from Enterprise Portals

New post from About Sharmila (Sam) Wijeyakumar about "Retail can benefit from Enterprise Portals":

"Enterprise portals act as an extension of your IT systems, while creating a personal environment for retail employees.

When people say a place has “all the comforts of home,” it’s one of the highest compliments they could give. The phrase evokes images of familiarity, convenience, and a personal touch that likely will bring the recipient back again."

Read the full post

Horizontal Portal in Education sector

I found this post about Horizontal Portal in Universities very interesting:

"Portals, as all major research organizations like Gartner, Forrester et al agree, have become one of the most visible information technology (IT) issues today. It is no different in the education vertical with many of the famous universities in the western world having already deployed their own portals."

Read the full post

Governments and Mobile Technologies

New mobile technologies and applications are changing the way people find and use information, data and services. This means that governments need to change the way they interact with employees, citizens, organizations and companies to meet the expectations of end users.
Governments effort aim to benefit from the use of new web-based applications. These functions are now also benefiting from recent developments in mobile and wireless technologies.
Governments must consider the mobile technologies as an opportunity to improve their service delivery and transparency through increased access to government data and information. Entando mobile allows governments of any size to display and access portal contents, data and services of different areas on any android or apple smart device.
Citizens and employees can easily choose which information display and manage them through a user-friendly widget interface. Thanks to an interactive, user-oriented and intuitive experience they can:

• Access and organize portal contents on tablets and smartphones
• Read on the go the latest news updates
• Access documents and government contents from all devices
• Analyze performance with a touch of the screen

The value for Governments is to support mobility of the citizens, employees and companies, allowing them to handle real-time information. For example: crimes, accidents, safety and other public issues (service delivery, healthcare, education, eParticipation and others).
These are some of the reasons why Governments are getting on board.

2012 Women of the Channel by CRN

Also this year CRN Magazine has published a list of Channel Woman for 2012.

"What drives success? For these executives, it’s motivation and a desire to be the best--both for their own careers and for the companies they serve. These leaders of vendors, distributors and VARs can take pride in all their 2011 accomplishments."

I'm one of CRN Magazine's 2012 Women of the Channel, here my profile http://www.crn.com/rankings-and-lists/wotc2012.htm?c=162 

Thanks to all Entando Team for their support and efforts, this is a team succes -:)

The different needs of local and central Government Portals (repost from blog.entando.com))

The Governments have begun a process of "innovation" with a new approach based on participation, sharing and collaboration.
In recent years the use of the web has changed from the simple consultation of information it has moved to the ability to create and edit multimedia content, and to allow people to contribute and share ideas.
Portals play an important role in this new paradigm because they allow governments to accelerate the transformation of the relationship between governments their stakeholders (citizens, employees, other organizations).
But, are we sure that local and central Governments have the same needs?
In Entando we have a lot of case studies of governments portals, from the small municipality websites to central governments service portals, each with different needs. Infact Entando is a versatile platform that can be used to build tailor-made solutions for a wide range of projects.

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Cagliari Municipality for example uses Entando for different types of  web applications: from simple informative websites to service portals for citizens and intranet for employees.
How does Entando help the Municiplaity of Cagliari to meet its needs?

• gives to citizens access to government information and services through the portals
• citizens can apply and pay for online services, with automated workflows helping to ensure efficient processing
• provides collaboration services like feeds, blogs and maps that helps citizents and empolyees to stay in touch with the governments in new and cost-effective ways
• intranet portals that helps employees stay informed and provide them with the tools they need to perform their duties in a more informed and efficient manner

So, the use of the Entando platform helps local governments to promote transparency, listening, engagement and dialogue with citizens and create an integrated work environment in which employees tracking information, receiving services and, increasingly, carry out their daily activities and their work processes.
 
CENTRAL GOVERNMENTS
But what about Central Governments? They have quite different needs from local governments. For example the Italian Civil Protection Department  or Italian Ministry of Justice, besides their need to encourage citizen communication they also need to talk to each other and provide interoperability between all systems.
For them Entando provides services and a technology web framework that helps to:

• integrate e-government service offerings across different agencies
• reduce the need to log on to different agency websites to order services or find information
• provide a platform for business stakeholders to interact with stimulus efforts and provide transparency
• tools that assist in the development of domain specific web applications and new web products
• federated portal system

Entando provides technological tools that accelerate the process of innovation in central governments.
 
COMMON NEEDS
We spoke about the different needs of local and central governments, but have they also common needs. Of course, these common needs represent the guidelines for the creation of portals in public sectors.
Entando flexibility allows easy personalization of the platform to meet government specific needs but also common guidelines offering:

• a portal that is highly configurable by an end user with no technical skill
• easy to use CMS (Content Management System)
• a platform compatible with accessibility international standards like and specific government laws for both front end and administration area
• highly interactive and accessible services that implements the paradigm of participation and collaboration
• adopts open standards and architectural patterns

If you are interested in more information about Entando Government Portals visit our website.

Lots of news on Entando

In latest months we have worked hard on Entando project and there are lot of news and innovations starting from the new brand.

After a year we finally moved from jAPS 2.0 Entando to Entando.

With the new brand also came a new logo and new image of the project and new websites are now online: the www.entando.com and www.entando.org

And what about the new Entando demo? I think it's very cool!

Also from the technical point of view there have been many innovations: we moved to github and to maven and we released of new version 2.4.0.1 with the introduction of the API Services system.

I suggest reading the following links for more details:
technology innovation;
Entando 2.4.0.1 is out

This however is only the beginning of the new era for Entando, we are working hard on all areas to reach the summit thanks to the passion of the people.

Stay tuned...