On July 9 and 10, OpenForum Europe (OFE) Executive Director Astor Nummelin Carlberg, Chairman Sachiko Muto, and Policy Advisor Nick Gates were in New York City for the OSPOs for Good 2024 Symposium. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened that week; it was a true Open Source Week, with events happening both the day before and the day after the main conference, not to mention the social we organized on July 9 and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) Member Breakfast on July 10.
The goal of OSPOs for Good Symposium – and by extension the side events that were also held – was twofold: (1) to direct energy towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and (2) to highlight the interests of open source developers and policymakers as part of the United Nations (UN) agenda. Over the two days, the event had 49 speakers and 38 members of the organising committees, which together ensured that the global open source community was well-represented.
Since the beginning of this year, OFE has been on the Programme Committee for the conference, helping to set the agenda for the conference, as well as guiding the setup of the main panel discussions and coordinating with confirmed speakers and presenters. While it was a significant amount of work to help set up and execute the event – with the bulk of effort coming from the UN Tech Envoy’s Office – the conference in its final form was a watershed moment; both a milestone for OFE’s open source advocacy in Europe and beyond, as well as a big opportunity for the global open source community to come together.
It’s worth appreciating why this is such a significant achievement. The idea of embedding principles of openness and open source in the high-level agenda of the UN, let alone giving open source developers a global platform, seemed a far-flung idea a few years ago. And while last year’s smaller first convening was a good step to change this, this year’s conference dramatically upped the stakes, offering a massive, international forum where the global open source community was convened in a big and rewarding way.
In this blog, we summarise the week’s activities, including the conference as well as related side events. We also share early ideas and lessons learned and consider what comes next from the momentum built over the last week’s activities.
The ‘Main Event’: Highlight from OSPOs for Good 2024
A view from the front of the UN’s ECOSOC Chamber.
We will not discuss all of the conference, but it was a great experience for all of the OFE Team. Astor opened the conference with some first remarks, Nick MCed throughout both days, and Sachiko hosted a panel on “Engaging the Open Source Community” on Day 2. (For a more in-depth overview of everything, check out Stéfane Fermigier’s detailed summary and this article on OSOR.) For our recap, we will focus below on what was showcased about European policymaking and innovation on the UN stage. If you would like to check out the conference and watch playback of the main sessions, you can head over to UN Web TV where all the recordings have been made available.
In a thematic track on Open Source and Government on Day One of the conference, Pearse O’Donohue – a Director for Future Networks Director from DG-CNECT – shared more about European values and what Europe has to share with the rest of the globe. In his keynote remarks, O’Donohue highlighted lessons on open source policymaking from the development of the critical role of the European Commission OSPO. He shared lessons learned from public administrations across Europe, what the Commission gained from engaging with the open source community in drafting the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), and the vital need for investment in digital commons.
Pearse O’Donohue from the European Commission’s DG-CNECT sharing his opening keynote remarks in the UN ECOSOC Chamber.
Some of the other highlights of the event from a European perspective included the discussions around Open Source at the UN and Open Source at Work in the World. In Open Source at the UN, panellists presented some of the interesting innovations the UN Secretariat and other UN agencies are working on to bring open source into their own work and advance open source innovation globally.
For example, Sameer Chauhan – director of the United Nations International Computing Center (UNICC) – spotlighted how UNICC is hosting a mirrored instanced of OpenWallet, a European digital wallets solution being developed by the OpenWallet Foundation. The initiative aims to make it easier for governments across the globe to adopt the solution and contribute code back upstream. Such an effort shows how Europe can work with the UN on open source innovation and help increase collaboration on digital public infrastructure (DPI) between countries.
The Open Source at Work in the World thematic track also had a high degree of relevance for Digital Commons. In it, Adriana Groh of the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) – a German public sector investment fund for open digital infrastructure – came to the front of the ECOSOC Chamber for a keynote with Andreas Reckert-Lodde, Interim Director of the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDis) – an German federal driving cooperation between the open source community and German public administrations. Together, they showcased how parts of the government are coming together to support and invest in open source.
A slide from Adriana and Andreas’ keynote address for the ‘Open Source at Work in the World’ panel.
Groh talked about the work the STF is doing to invest in open digital base technologies (ODBTs), which form the foundations of open digital infrastructure, as well as the ecosystem-strengthening activities and Digital Commons investments being funded by STF. Reckert-Lodde, on the other hand, showcased the work ZenDis is leading on engaging the open source developer community. He reflected on the process of making open source code development both feasible and desirable from the perspective of public administration and public service delivery.
While there were many more highlights besides just these two, we believe that they collectively demonstrate how European businesses, the EU, and EU Member States have been pioneering the development, stewardship, and maintenance of open source software and standards for decades. We could not be more thrilled to see that work centred so prominently at the UN.
Government Spotlight: Policymaking and Strategy for Building Open Source Ecosystems
The day before the conference, OFE held an event with the Eclipse Foundation and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), spotlighting the importance of governments in building and supporting open source ecosystems using policymaking and strategy.
Throughout the event, presenters and panellists discussed many of the challenges public administrations face in using and supporting open technologies at scale. The event, moderated by Nick Gates of OFE, kicked off with presentations from Jacob Green (OSPO++), Lucy Harris (DPGA), Enzo Ribagnac (Eclipse Foundation). The presenters shared contrasting, but complementary, perspectives on open source policymaking and strategy. One perspective focused on internal government adoption of open source, while the other focused on contribution and support to open source developer ecosystems.
Afterwards, there was a coffee break in which attendees brainstormed challenges and opportunities for governments regarding policymaking and strategy across each of these perspectives. Finally, a panel discussion happened where Enzo Ribagnac was joined by Leonhard Kugler (Center for Digital Sovereignty), Armando J. Manzueta-Peña (Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development in the Dominican Republic), and Lea Gimpel (DPGA).
Some of the panellists and organisers of the Government Spotlight onstage at The Great Hall at Cooper Union on Monday 8 July.
Together, the panellists responded to and discussed some of these challenges more critically, in the context of their own experiences and perspectives. Panellists broadly discussed some of the challenges in making “open source” work for institutions that have not normally been set up to work in the open. For example, they discussed the importance of open source policies, but also how policy is only a starting point for the many decisions that can be taken each and every day by institutions.
On the topic of adoption and use, panellists discussed how and why it is necessary to reform regulation and procurement of open source to help stimulate open source adoption, looking at the importance of legal compliance and security in designing new methods of engagement with the open source community. On the topic of engagement with ecosystems, panellists also considered the myriad challenges governments face in reducing risk. They noted, for example, the need to both fund education and skills programmes, but also the corresponding need to raise awareness and build capacity around open source in the public sector itself.
What’s Next for Open Source? Reflections from a day of reflection works
A card for the “What’s Next for Open Source?” workshops on the Linux Foundation website, which took place on Thursday 11 July.
While the main conference offered a bunch of fantastic opportunities for engagement with some of the main ideas of the conference, it was the “What’s Next for Open Source?” workshops on Thursday – co-organized by the Linux Foundation, OSPO++, and the Apache Software Foundation – which really helped bring things all together. Through the day’s three tracks and nine workshops, attendees were offered a chance to take a breath and reflect on what they had just learned. Sessions range from ones on speed mentoring and collective brainstorming to more topical ones on open source AI and open source infrastructure.
During one of the last sessions of the day, OFE organised a workshop, a series of mini panel discussions, on ‘Open Source Infrastructure for Social Good’ with the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and the DPGA. This session attempted to remove the jargon of terms like digital public goods, digital commons, and digital public infrastructure to focus more holistically on the challenges governments face in using open source infrastructure for social good. The session considered open source infrastructure from many points of view, both as the code itself and the applications of code, as well as the organisational and policy infrastructure to support reuse of open source technologies.
The workshop featured three ‘mini-panels’, hosted by Jon Lloyd of the DPGA, Jake Watson of DIAL, and Nick from OFE. Each of the mini panels centred on different perspectives – the government perspective, the builder/maintainer perspective, and the support perspective, respectively. In his panel, Nick spoke with some of the people working to support adoption and reuse of open source technologies in governments across the globe, with focus on related issues such as readiness, policymaking, and capacity-building.
Nick’s mini-panel on the perspective of supports, people working on technology in global development cooperation.
What happens now?
One thing is clear from last week’s activities: the willingness from the open source community to do more to help the UN achieve the SDGs is there, as is the desire of the UN to help advance open source collaboration. In order to make good on this willingness, though, we – as a global community of organisations and individuals passionate about open source – need to find ways to continue coming together over the next years and make more concrete what we will do to achieve this agenda.
A good first step would be laying out what that vision for OSPOs for Good looks like as part of a manifesto, which can be brought to both policymakers and the open source community. Such a vision will help policymakers channel this momentum towards increased regional collaboration and more diverse forms of engagement with the open source community. It will also help open source developers and businesses take their own steps towards engaging with the global agenda. If we start now, we hope that potential future events can more tactically take stock of the progress we make, share lessons learned, and help strengthen open source collaboration.
Over the next two months, OFE will be working with RISE, the Tech Envoy’s Office, and the Linux Foundation to author and publish a conference report. This report will summarise some of the key ideas and lessons learned from the week’s events, as well as offer forward-looking ideas and policy recommendations for how this momentum can be channelled. Throughout the next year, we will also continue to work with the UN to help embed open source in its strategic agenda and engage with the open source community.
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We would be remiss not to acknowledge some key people without whom these four days would not have happened. First and foremost, we would like to thank the UN Tech Envoy’s office for their invaluable efforts. This includes: Omar Mohsine, Mithusha Kajendran, Mehdi Snene, and Mortiz Carl Fromageot. Throughout, Jacob Green of OSPO++ was a tireless open source leader who helped bring the event into existence, as were the representatives from the Federal Government of Germany and the Republic of Kenya. We would also like to thank our many collaborators and contributors to the side events and social events, including those at the Linux Foundation, GitHub, Eclipse Foundation, DPGA, Sovereign Tech Fund, Mozilla, Open Source Business Alliance, and many, many others.
Stay tuned for what comes next and watch this space!