It is impossible to look back at this year without acknowledging the immense impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on almost every single aspect of life. While we can hardly wait to flip the calendar to 2021 and hope for a return to some sense of normality, in the final newsletter of 2020, we would like to pause and recognise that it has also been a memorable year for open source.
As we retreated into our homes in March, everything needed to become digital immediately. Governments had to react to a crisis and reorganise public life while most of its workforce needed to work remotely for the first time. Citizens had to become accommodated to working from home, while ensuring communication and collaboration at work and in their personal lives. Open source tools played an important role in ensuring a smooth transition from the office or school to working or studying from home: Jitsi video-conferencing platform, the Moodle open source learning platform, and open source secure messaging applications such as Tchap, which is used in the French government.
Additionally, COVID-19 highlighted the need for fit-for-purpose, efficient and trustworthy digital solutions for the public sector, healthcare, and education that could be quickly adapted and implemented. Project plans, software launches and various services that previously had timelines spanning months and years now had to be implemented in a matter of days. In many instances over the last year, the answer to this was found in open source software and hardware – which is available without restrictions, for everyone to use, study, share and improve. From the outset, open source played a tangible role in mitigating the impact of the pandemic. Moreover, communities came together to support the public sector in its effort to fight the crisis. For instance, an international team in Linz, Austria developed the plans for life-saving ventilators and shared them freely. For further open source software and open source hardware that help medical staff, public administrations, businesses and citizens in their daily lives, visit the Commission’s Digital Response to Covid-19 repository created with the support of OSOR team and in collaboration with the open source community.
Crucially, open source solutions could also be inspected to ensure trustworthiness, which is essential for handling sensitive health data. Nowhere was this more pertinent than in COVID-19 tracing apps handling location and health data. 14 European governments made their apps available as open source and some even built their apps as forks of other country’s apps, thus saving time and resources in the process. OSOR reported on several open source COVID-19 tracing apps including, among others, Radar Covid (Spain), Coronalert (Belgium) and Corona-Warn-App (Germany). The role that open source can play in delivering such solutions is hopefully something that will be remembered as we move forward beyond the crisis.
2020 has proven that digitalisation is essential. It has also highlighted the need for real choice, reliable services and for users to play a leading role. Moving into 2021, there is a strong opportunity for open source to help both in delivering those services and in building the trust needed to improve uptake. This is accentuated by the Berlin Declaration, signed 8 December 2020 by all EU Member State Ministers responsible for digital transformation in the public administration, that recognises open source as a facilitator for deploying and developing strategic digital tools and capacities in the public sector.
As we sign off for the last time in 2020, the OSOR Team would like to wish our readers a pleasant holiday season and a happy and healthy new year. See you all in 2021!
The OSOR Team
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