City of Marseille and OpenMairie invigorate development OpenADS building permit management software

Marseille, France’s second largest city, and OpenMairie, a community of city administrations working on open source software, are boosting the development of OpenADS, a software solution for managing building and zoning permits. Last week, the two started the OpenADS working group, to bring together the many public administrations that use the software, and to manage the development roadmap.

OpenADS is now one of the top-5 tools used in France for managing building and zoning permits, according to Thierry Benita, CIO of atReal, an open source ICT service provider based in Marseille. Last week, Benita was elected project leader for the newly formed working group. “This will be a great opportunity for the development of OpenADS”, expects Mr Benita, “as it allows many municipalities to share a mutual implementation.”

The working group last week also released the 3.30.0 version of OpenADS.

OpenADS (Authorisation des Droits des Sols, authorisation for land rights) combines Geographic Information software (GIS) with cadastre information and Alfresco, an open source document management system. The software can be combined with many other GIS systems, reports Adullact, an association for civil servants working on free software. The group manages a software repository, and OpenADS is one of the many solutions that it makes available.

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The city of Marseille decided on using the tool in 2012, and completed the transition in 2014. In April that same year, OpenADS was implemented by the inter-municipal cooperation organisation in Brittany. Here it is used to manage broadband infrastructure projects. As a result, the software is now used by 349 cities and towns in the peninsular region.

Development of the software solution was started in 2007 by François Raynaud, head of the IT department at the city of Arles.

More information:

Announcement of OpenADS 3.30.0 (in French)

About Marseille and OpenADS (in French)

About OpenMairie

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