During 2001/2 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister funded the APLAWS Pathfinder Project to develop web standards and an Open Source Web Content Management System that could be freely adopted by any local authority in the UK. Following the massive interest in the Pathfinder, the APLAWS Project was taken forward as part of the Officer of the Prime Minister's National Projects programme and became the foundation of the Content Management Strand of the Local Authority Websites National Project over the period April 2003 - March 2004.
Apart from the financial and specific support provided by these two central government funded projects, the APLAWS concept has moved forward on its own momentum. There is an established user group which has already made considerable strives in taking the product set forward. Like any Open Source project, the sustainability of these products will evolve as the user group continues to grow.