The Open Police

The design principles behind the open government platform of the Belgian Local Police

www.openpolice.beStudiedag Informatie Management 2015#imgent

http://www.openpolice.be/sites.html

Local Police websites

http://www.openpolice.be/blog/2015/01/08/2014-in-review.html

3.600.000 visitors in 2014

34% mobile traffic in Dec 2014

Open EverythingUnique in Belgium

Open Development - Open Source - Open Data

http://www.openpolice.be

Why Open Matters

We strongly believe that an open development model is the only way to foster badly-needed government standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for government agencies, and create a large

ecosystem that spans the government as a whole.

All of our code is freely available under an open source license. Anyone can run it, build on it, or submit changes to it.

Start with user needshttps://flic.kr/p/eQtasQ

People come to our sites to accomplish tasks and fulfil needs

Not just to hang out

Do lesshttps://flic.kr/p/bwHCXU

Government should only do what they can do

If someone else is doing it, link to it

https://www.agiv.be/producten/crab

AGIV - CRAB

Open Data Manual of Flanders - http://www.opendataforum.info

Provide Open Data

Accessible, machine-readable data about services

http://www.lokalepolitie.be/5388/nieuws.json

Open Data

Design with datahttps://flic.kr/p/cpzHPw

Great advantage of digital services

Watch and learn from user behaviour, to fit naturally rather than bending them

Social media influence (Police zone of Leuven)

Do the hard work to make it simplehttps://flic.kr/p/qhd2dh

Making something look simple is easy ...

… making something simple to use is much harder

Iterate. Then iterate again.https://flic.kr/p/byypYZ

Iteration reduces risk

Avoids the bottleneck of a 200 page spec document,things can be undone, we’re not building bridges

+300 closed development tickets since September 2013.

Start small and iterate wildly

Add features and refinements based on feedback from real users

http://www.openpolice.be/blog/2014/09/10/schedule-a-news-article.html

Schedule a news article

Build for inclusionhttps://flic.kr/p/faH5Lt

Accessible design is good design

Build a product that’s inclusive, clear and readable

If we have to sacrifice elegance?

So be it!

http://www.dekamer.be/flwb/pdf/53/3403/53K3403001.pdf

Build digital services, not websiteshttps://flic.kr/p/gtrSxL

Services don’t begin nor end at our website

It might start with a search engine and end at the Police station

http://www.openpolice.be/blog/2014/12/12/holiday-office-hours.html

Holiday office hours

Understand contexthttps://flic.kr/p/o3ZQHn

We’re designing for people, not screens

Understand the technological and practical circumstances in which our services are used

Make things open: it makes things betterhttps://flic.kr/p/nDzaE3

https://github.com/belgianpolice

Open Source

http://www.openpolice.be

Open Development

https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-must-90c75eb7c5b0

“We are the government, everything we create must be made available to all of us for the benefit of everyone.”

Johan Janssens

DemoTry it yourself

www.openpolice.be/demo

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about/

Inspired by UK’s Government Digital Service

We build things for the webwww.timble.net

Thank youwww.openpolice.be - @OpenPoliceBE