So I arrived back in Sydney to a choice of some pretty big Web Integration projects, and I decided to work with NSW State Library as a Technical Project Lead for the Website Online Systems Integration Project (WOSIP) under the Digital Excellence Project (DEP).
Digital Excellence Project at the NSW State Library
The project will encompass the solution design for the Online Web Portal which will be the public gateway to access all of the libraries online services. The solution design will involve all online systems, main website, e-commerce, Point of Sale Software, Single Sign On, Event ticketing, Venue Hire, Access to Libraries Catalogue, Ez-Proxy research database access, Faceted Multi-site Search, Release Cycle Management, SDLC design and implementation and a main area of the portal will be to allow the public access the the NSW State Library digitized collections.
This is a huge project and one I am proud to design the solution for and to assist the NSW State Library move into a new era of Open Source code and Open Data Management and Citizen Engagement. It will be a huge challenge and one that will involve introducing more transparent development practices and SDLC management.
The other main thing that this project will see is the release of GPL code back into the Drupal community from the NSW State Government which will be a great achievement and help to continue to precedent of contributing back. To give you an idea the first time I took code contributions from Australian Federal Government was in 2008 and was back to the Drupal project. There was many a meeting and many a hand holding and legal discussions but we got over the hurdles and the Australian Government has been contributing code back ever since.
I will aim to have other blog posts throughout the lifespan of the project and after its completion I plan to write up a CFP for some OpenSource projects which would see me once and for all finally share some stories of what is set to be a game changing platform for Citizen Engagement and Open Data.