Open Source Observatory

OSOR

The European Commission’s DG DIGIT, in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Interior and Open Cities, is organising a webinar “Public services open-source governance and collaboration” on 30 March 2023 from 9:45 to 12:45. The event is open to the representatives of the European public services and academia (state-owned tertiary education.) Its main goal is to discuss the collaboration of public sector organisations under the Brno Open Source Declaration[1].

OSOR is pleased to announce a webinar on Tuesday 4 May, from 2pm to 4pm CET, on "Policy & Strategy Aspects of OSS in Public Administration". This is the first in a series of three and will present the report from our experts workshop which takes place on 25 March. The webinar will be open to all. Registration will open soon.

OSOR published a new section to support public administrations wanting to start an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) in their organisation. The page collects information, news and guides to answer the most common questions.OSOR will update the page frequently with new resources developed by OSOR and by third parties. Later this year, we will also publish a study mapping the developments of public sector OSPOs in Europe.

Fabio Bonelli is a software engineer in Developers Italia, which is part of the Italian government's Department for Digital Transformation: "Using FLOSS is an essential aspect of building transparent and high-quality systems, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. A truly transparent and democratic system will also involve open data, public APIs, and other mechanisms that allow for broader participation, collaboration, and feedback from stakeholders."

The adoption of the Interoperable Europe Act (proposed on 18/11/2022) would constitute a major progression towards the – non binding – implementation of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) formulating the EU interoperability strategic policy since 2010. It will reinforce the use of the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) as our common legal interoperability licensing tool.

Czechia will start using an open source web analytics tool, Matomo, on government websites, announced Czechia’s National Agency for Communication and Information Technologies (NAKIT) recently. Matomo will replace Google Analytics at the Czech citizen portal and gov.cz websites.

This month, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) announced having started to use the Open source Nextcloud suite and Collabora Online. This decision is a result of the data protection authority’s Digital Strategy for a safer digital future. While the initiative is yet just a pilot, these first steps might imply a wider uptake of OSS solutions in the EU institutions. As the implementation of Nextcloud was facilitated through a partnership with TAS Cloud Services for the integration with the EU login, the solution could be reused in other EU services.

"Next 29th and 30th of March will take place the Second Free Culture Conference of the URJC. They are conceived as a meeting point, training, and exchange of experiences on issues related to free culture at the University: open publishing (of teaching materials, research, etc.), open science, open data, free software, etc. It will feature presentations by experts on some of these topics, workshops on specific topics, and presentations by the university community. As a novelty, this year we will have a fair space, where we will share tools and news about culture and free software."

foss-north is back as a physical event this year! After having been held only virtually, the organisers are happy to have the possibility to invite you back to Gothenburg, Sweden. "foss-north is a free / open source conference covering both software and hardware from the technical perspective. Hosted in Gothenburg between Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm, with an international airport, we provide a meeting place for the Nordic foss communities and will bring together great speakers with a great audience."

"Organized by OSGeo and with more than 15 years of experience, this international annual gathering of location enthusiasts is the largest global gathering for geospatial software. FOSS4G brings together developers, users, decision-makers and observers from a broad spectrum of organizations and fields of operation. Through seven days of workshops, presentations, discussions, and cooperation, FOSS4G participants create effective and relevant geospatial products, standards, and protocols."

"This chapter discusses the Open Source Program Office (‘OSPO’). OSPO’s have become de rigeur through 2020 and many organisations wonder how they benefit from starting one — and, perhaps why they should invest in one, especially when they are already consuming open source software. The chapter considers the advantage of engaging with an OSPO, its history and origins, and an OPSO’s impacts on an organisation. It argues that the biggest reason to do so is to proactively drive product/service intention and strategy, which also happens to be the biggest benefit of engaging with open source projects. Proactively driving product/service strategy tends to speed time to market, providing a competitive advantage."

"This paper presents the state of play, rationale and context of the emergence of Open Source Program Offices in the public sector observed in the last couple of years. It is published jointly by OpenForum Europe and the OSPO Alliance that hosts OSPO.Zone, an open experience-sharing platform to facilitate discovery of tools and best practices in Open Source software management."