FR: Existing open source portal to be used by Paris region schools

by Gijs Hillenius — published on Oct 30, 2009

— filed under: [GL] Other European Countries, [GL] Germany, [T] Policies and Announcements, [GL] France

The 471 schools in the Paris region to be involved in the portal project that was announced earlier this month, will be using Eliot, web-based work-flow software that was originally developed for three schools in the same area.

The regional administration Ile de France on 19 October signed a 19,6 million euro six-year contract with Logica, Fylab and other IT services providers for the design, implementation and management of the work-flow portal.

The portal will be accessed by about one million users , including 400,000 schoolchildren. This makes it one of Europe's biggest open source projects, Logica said in a statement.

The portal software Eliot is developed by about seventy developers at the Toulouse software development firm Fylab. It was founded in 2000 by Franck Silvestre, a former school teacher. Fylab last year became a subsidiary of the French IT company OMT.

Eliot is built on top of open source components such as the relation database management system PostgreSQL, the Apache web server and the Tomcat Java application server.

The work-flow portal can be accessed using no more than a web browser. It allow the system to be up to date, in technology as well as in applications, explained Olivier Vigneau, project manager at Logica, in the statement published by the company. "The majority of applications used five years from now, are yet to be imagined."

Switzerland and Germany

Using Eliot will allow teachers, students, school staff and parents to have secure access to all resources and services related to education. The portal will list student grades and their class attendance and absence. It offers access to documents, forums and library resources.

Teachers can add newsletters, publish their notes online and parents can see how their children are progressing, according to reports in the French media this week. "The portal will ease the exchange of information between all those involved in the schools", says Vigneau.

The portal in early 2010 will be implemented at sixty schools that where the first to responded to the region's call to participate. The other school will be included in the next four years.

Project-manager Vigneau expects that the Paris schools will be cooperating with a comparable work flow project used by some 200,000 students in schools in the French Picardie region. This project is not using Eliot, but Vigneau says some of the experiences can be shared.

According to Vigneau, Eliot is also being used by schools in Strasbourg and some schools in Switzerland and Germany.