DC-based open source development shop Development Seed and Phase2 Technology announced that Phase2 has acquired two Drupal distributions, Open Atrium and Managing News.
Phase2 now has the top four Drupal distributions in use in government under its wings. It already hosted the OpenPublic and OpenPublish distributions, both of which are in use by numerous government and publishing clients. The ability to share code between government bodies — something that better interoperability between distributions might facilitate — could be a considerable cost saver for budget-strapped governments at all levels.
The new .gov websites emerging as government platforms include support for rich media, ideation capabilities, accessibility, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable developers to build upon them. That’s why, for instance, rebooting the FCC online will mean moving FCC.gov to Drupal. Later this year, Energy.gov will move to Drupal. Notably, the websites for dozens of freshman representatives on House.gov moved to Drupal. Of course, these recent moves all follow WhiteHouse.gov, which switched to Drupal in 2009.