When you're running a university or public sector organisation, there are usually two things of which you don’t have much: time or budget to waste. And that’s exactly why so many choose open source.
Historically, universities have been hubs for the development and promotion of open source technologies, acting as incubators for innovation and community-driven projects. Public sector organisations favour open source to maintain control over their digital infrastructure, ensuring that they are not dependent on any vendors, and their roadmap, they need to be able to adapt their systems to national requirements
Strategic benefits of open source
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Cost-efficiency
Yes, open source software is technically free. However, that’s not why universities and governments continue to choose it.
The real value lies in not being tied to a single vendor or locked into a license fee that increases annually. You’re not paying for access — you’re paying for what you build with it, how you use it, and how you grow it over time. You can shift priorities without writing on the community forums, desperately waiting for a platform update, or begging your account manager for a change in the product roadmap. Investment in open source by public sectors and universities reflects a dedication to building common digital resources and infrastructure, benefiting citizens and promoting technological independence.
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Flexibility
Universities are often managing dozens of faculties, departments, and microsites. Governments are working across services, from healthcare to public information portals. They need to run things their way, not a one-size-fits-all way or an off-the-shelf system tells them to. They need something unique and flexible to meet their needs, allowing them to tailor software to their specific needs and diverse departments without being constrained by vendor lock-in.
With open source (like Drupal, about which we know a thing or two), you get complete control over content, data, permissions, and integrations. Universities have a federated system to manage their users, staff, students, researchers, and research, which means a group of independent teams playing on the same side. With this type of system architecture Drupal is a strong fit thanks to its flexibility, modular design, and built-in support for systems working together to maintain a unified voice.
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Collaboration
Universities and governmental departments don’t want to reinvent the wheel every time they launch a project — and with open source, they don’t have to.
They can build on what others have already done, share modules, and contribute back. That collective development model means better quality, faster improvements, and a sense of shared ownership that fits well with how public sector organisations work.
We love that our work with open source has made a real impact with our government and university customers.
Case study:
A leading UK university partnered with Full Fat Things to modernise its digital platform, which had become difficult to manage and scale. Our team began by improving the developer experience — merging code into a unified repository, cleaning up legacy modules, and introducing automated testing, security alerts, and modern dependency management tools. We upgraded their platform, ensuring long-term performance and stability.
On the editorial side, we redesigned workflows with clearer roles and permissions, making it easier for different teams to manage content while maintaining quality and consistency. Being a federated system, it was of the utmost importance to have that flexibility and consistency across their users, research data, staff & students. To improve how data was handled, we replaced outdated custom scripts with Drupal’s Migrate framework, simplifying future imports and reducing errors. We also helped the design and development teams work more efficiently by integrating Storybook into the development workflow. To support a better content editing experience, we reviewed and optimised their page-building tools, weighing up Layout Builder versus Paragraphs based on real editorial needs. Finally, we migrated their infrastructure to Azure — including DevOps integration and production hosting — resulting in faster deployments, improved scalability, and better global performance.
Result
A faster, more reliable, secure, and easier-to-manage platform ready to scale. Let's chat
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Scability
Starting small? That’s fine. Growing into something massive? Also fine.
Open source platforms can handle complex user journeys, multilingual content, accessibility standards, and massive traffic without falling over. And because it’s yours, you can keep iterating as your needs evolve.
There’s no “outgrowing” a good open source setup. You just keep building on it. Whereas often, product vendors can’t keep up with the pace of their users.
Conclusion
Choosing open source isn’t about being trendy or ticking a box. It’s about building something that works for you, on your terms, without unnecessary limits or inflated costs.
We’ve helped many organisations across multiple industries with their open source. We’ve seen the benefit in integrating it, especially within governmental organisations and universities. Check out our customers who chose open source.