WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.000 So now I'm talking into the mic and the sounds needs seems to work. 00:09.000 --> 00:10.000 Great. 00:10.000 --> 00:11.000 Cool. 00:11.000 --> 00:13.000 My name is Yuan Li Noker. 00:13.000 --> 00:15.000 I'm from I'm a senior research at Rice. 00:15.000 --> 00:18.000 The National Research Institute of Sweden. 00:18.000 --> 00:20.000 And here we have the gates. 00:20.000 --> 00:23.000 Senior Policy Advisor at OpenForm Europe. 00:23.000 --> 00:27.000 And we're going to present a study we did together with 00:28.000 --> 00:36.000 Youngness and Simon as part of a report that you want to. 00:36.000 --> 00:37.000 Yeah. 00:37.000 --> 00:40.000 So this report was funded by the Open Service Observatory. 00:40.000 --> 00:42.000 This is a project run by D.G. 00:42.000 --> 00:44.000 Digit in the European Commission. 00:44.000 --> 00:47.000 And as part of that, they try and gather news and intelligence from across Europe 00:47.000 --> 00:51.000 around how open source software is being used by public administrations. 00:51.000 --> 00:54.000 Particularly at the national level, but also at the local and regional level, 00:54.000 --> 00:56.000 which is what we'll talk about today. 00:57.000 --> 01:02.000 So our main message is we're going to talk about digital sovereignty, 01:02.000 --> 01:05.000 but we're going to talk about it from the ground up. 01:05.000 --> 01:10.000 So basically how local governments can start thinking about this topic and how open source 01:10.000 --> 01:16.000 can be used and developed and collaborate on in different forms and ways. 01:16.000 --> 01:23.000 First off, when we say digital sovereignty, we prefer open strategic autonomy, 01:23.000 --> 01:29.000 because it communicates the need for control agency over your digital future, 01:29.000 --> 01:35.000 in many ways, but it highlights the notion of open that you should still aim to collaborate, 01:35.000 --> 01:39.000 to share and reuse, promote and drop ability as far as possible. 01:39.000 --> 01:41.000 To make that happen. 01:41.000 --> 01:45.000 Open strategic autonomy of digital sovereignty requires control, 01:45.000 --> 01:48.000 which requires investments and contributions, 01:48.000 --> 01:50.000 especially in the case of open source, 01:50.000 --> 01:53.000 and this requires capabilities. 01:53.000 --> 01:56.000 The issue we have in public sector, 01:56.000 --> 02:01.000 and this is both our general observations throughout our years in this space, 02:01.000 --> 02:07.000 but also throughout the study where we did 25ish interviews 02:07.000 --> 02:11.000 is that public sector suffers from a conference syndrome. 02:11.000 --> 02:14.000 It's risk-aversiveness. 02:14.000 --> 02:17.000 It's conservative procurement culture. 02:17.000 --> 02:21.000 It's a preference towards the status quo. 02:21.000 --> 02:26.000 Someone told it nicely yesterday that civil servants, 02:26.000 --> 02:30.000 they are tasked with keeping the state functioning. 02:30.000 --> 02:33.000 They're not tasked with taking risks, 02:33.000 --> 02:35.000 which I think highlights it. 02:35.000 --> 02:38.000 And it's not a healer, me or he problem. 02:38.000 --> 02:41.000 It's a wee problem. 02:42.000 --> 02:44.000 This is Derek Schroeder. 02:44.000 --> 02:47.000 He had a chance to re-advisation in, 02:47.000 --> 02:52.000 so he put it quite nicely in a hearing in the Danish Parliament, 02:52.000 --> 02:54.000 earlier last spring, 02:54.000 --> 02:57.000 that this change requires courage, 02:57.000 --> 03:00.000 and that sovereign requires systematic changes, 03:00.000 --> 03:02.000 not just technical replacements. 03:02.000 --> 03:05.000 So open strategic autonomy requires 03:05.000 --> 03:07.000 that we grow capabilities. 03:07.000 --> 03:09.000 That's our key message of the day. 03:09.000 --> 03:13.000 And this capability needs to be both on the transnational, 03:13.000 --> 03:17.000 on a European level, on the national level, and on the local level. 03:17.000 --> 03:21.000 And it's a local level that we will focus on now. 03:21.000 --> 03:25.000 And in the study we did focused on five case studies, 03:25.000 --> 03:29.000 on five different open source projects 03:29.000 --> 03:32.000 that's being collaborated on, shared and reused, 03:32.000 --> 03:37.000 governed, driven from various local governments on different levels. 03:37.000 --> 03:42.000 And I handed it to Nick to dive into the different case studies. 03:42.000 --> 03:46.000 So really what we thought to do with the case study was to do a systematic review, 03:46.000 --> 03:49.000 which we found absent in the literature of open source adoption 03:49.000 --> 03:52.000 and reused at the local government level. 03:52.000 --> 03:55.000 The reason we did this study is because there is a question 03:55.000 --> 03:58.000 around what it means to collaborate on open source 03:58.000 --> 03:59.000 in a public sector context, 03:59.000 --> 04:02.000 and while there's an emerging literature at the national level, 04:02.000 --> 04:05.000 that literature wasn't well represented at the local level, 04:05.000 --> 04:08.000 and we sought to situate it in the context of sovereignty, 04:08.000 --> 04:12.000 and some of these decisions that people make around 04:12.000 --> 04:15.000 the capability and control they need to run public administrations 04:15.000 --> 04:18.000 in a city context as opposed to a national context. 04:18.000 --> 04:22.000 So we surveyed a wide range of literature, 04:22.000 --> 04:25.000 including over, I think, 60 papers, 04:25.000 --> 04:29.000 and ultimately we featured 15 papers in our final paper. 04:29.000 --> 04:34.000 Across those 15 papers we identified different types of OSS collaboration, 04:34.000 --> 04:37.000 so projects that emerge organically within the public sector, 04:37.000 --> 04:39.000 projects that emerge in the community 04:39.000 --> 04:43.000 and get wasted into foundations, projects that emerge as collaborations 04:43.000 --> 04:47.000 between ministries or agencies within a city or across borders, 04:47.000 --> 04:48.000 all of these different archetypes. 04:48.000 --> 04:52.000 And we used that to surface along lists of 25 case studies 04:52.000 --> 04:54.000 that we thought were broadly representative of different ways 04:54.000 --> 04:57.000 in which public sector collaboration around open source offer happens, 04:57.000 --> 05:01.000 and then we selected five to feature in the case in the report. 05:02.000 --> 05:06.000 And we think that they're broadly representative of different types of open source collaboration dynamics, 05:06.000 --> 05:08.000 and I think they represent different archetypes, 05:08.000 --> 05:11.000 also by which people can build sovereignty from the ground up. 05:11.000 --> 05:14.000 So the first one is console democracy of this toilet, 05:14.000 --> 05:18.000 but citizen participation software, particularly for participatory budgeting, 05:18.000 --> 05:22.000 to give themselves some more control over how they run their democratic processes. 05:22.000 --> 05:25.000 So what we really learned about this case study was there's many different ways 05:25.000 --> 05:29.000 that this type of collaboration can happen and it can be decentralized. 05:30.000 --> 05:33.000 There's many different ways to think about the role of a foundation, 05:33.000 --> 05:36.000 and how it can actually provide support to the public sector 05:36.000 --> 05:40.000 or leverage support from the public sector to evolve over time. 05:40.000 --> 05:43.000 So I'll move on to the next one. 05:43.000 --> 05:46.000 This one is called OS2BoggerPC and MedBoggerPC. 05:46.000 --> 05:48.000 I'm actually going to let Johan talk about this one 05:48.000 --> 05:50.000 because it's very close to home for him. 05:50.000 --> 05:52.000 Okay, yeah. 05:52.000 --> 05:54.000 So this one is interesting. 05:54.000 --> 05:56.000 So this emerged from in Denmark, 05:56.000 --> 06:04.000 as a need to create a public citizen library PC distribution OS. 06:04.000 --> 06:11.000 It grew out of a number of municipalities engaged 06:11.000 --> 06:15.000 and very closely to one specific vendor. 06:15.000 --> 06:19.000 And so it has continued and grown sustainably, 06:19.000 --> 06:23.000 but there's a lot of interesting nuances here 06:23.000 --> 06:27.000 in that there's different perceptions in this case study. 06:27.000 --> 06:33.000 So on the one hand, there's a perception from OS2, 06:33.000 --> 06:39.000 which is a municipal association in Denmark 06:39.000 --> 06:44.000 with about 85 plus, I believe, out of 98 municipalities. 06:44.000 --> 06:49.000 So that's where the OS2BoggerPC project is hosted, 06:50.000 --> 06:55.000 they maintain it through this main vendor. 06:55.000 --> 07:00.000 And then, with time and with various activity, 07:00.000 --> 07:03.000 coming from the steward side, 07:03.000 --> 07:08.000 the municipal side seems from our observations 07:08.000 --> 07:11.000 to be some kind of vacuum there, 07:11.000 --> 07:15.000 which generated that the vendor started moving more rapidly. 07:15.000 --> 07:20.000 So that really illustrated some sort of a split 07:20.000 --> 07:25.000 or where the municipalities believed that they were 07:25.000 --> 07:28.000 being more and more locked into this vendor, 07:28.000 --> 07:31.000 while the vendor was more of the perception 07:31.000 --> 07:33.000 well, everything's there. 07:33.000 --> 07:36.000 And that led into the bringing out to another vendor, 07:36.000 --> 07:38.000 to the code review, 07:38.000 --> 07:41.000 and there was kind of a split in governance, 07:41.000 --> 07:43.000 and I don't know the state of play today, 07:44.000 --> 07:48.000 but this really shows how it's very important for municipalities 07:48.000 --> 07:52.000 to stay active and not drop, drop the mic, 07:52.000 --> 07:54.000 or lose focus. 07:54.000 --> 07:58.000 They maintain maintenance happens on a day-to-day basis. 07:58.000 --> 08:02.000 And if a vendor is driving the maintenance, 08:02.000 --> 08:05.000 they need to be empowered to do that, 08:05.000 --> 08:09.000 and the municipalities need to be on that train. 08:10.000 --> 08:13.000 While still the municipalities need to ensure 08:13.000 --> 08:18.000 that there is certain quality assurances 08:18.000 --> 08:23.000 in place to ensure that there is no risk of getting locked 08:23.000 --> 08:24.000 in even though it. 08:24.000 --> 08:26.000 Development within a specific municipality. 08:26.000 --> 08:29.000 So what we really observed was that the MIT license, 08:29.000 --> 08:33.000 in this case, really wasn't for collaboration with other city's regions, 08:33.000 --> 08:36.000 but it was to attract and retain developers and talent, 08:36.000 --> 08:40.000 an operator ICT, which is a joint stock company owned by the city of Prague, 08:40.000 --> 08:45.000 was actually able to provide better salaries than a lot of public sector institutions. 08:45.000 --> 08:47.000 They could also work on behalf of clients, 08:47.000 --> 08:49.000 so they weren't just working for the public sector, 08:49.000 --> 08:51.000 they could also do other types of work. 08:51.000 --> 08:56.000 And that enabled a more kind of agile style of public sector IT development, 08:56.000 --> 09:00.000 and open source was kind of a strategy to attract and maintain talent, 09:00.000 --> 09:04.000 but also to help make sure that this platform was usable by other kind of 09:04.000 --> 09:08.000 industries or other agencies and departments within the city. 09:08.000 --> 09:11.000 So one of the lessons here, I think, was open source and can help 09:11.000 --> 09:13.000 with development recruitment and code quality, 09:13.000 --> 09:17.000 and helps build trust with city stakeholders and eases kind of collaboration 09:17.000 --> 09:19.000 even within a given city. 09:19.000 --> 09:23.000 And you kind of see some overlapping inner source and open source dynamics here. 09:23.000 --> 09:27.000 But yeah, that cross-departmental collaboration was a very fundamental lesson for us, 09:27.000 --> 09:31.000 in a very unique example compared to some of the other case studies. 09:31.000 --> 09:35.000 We do see some example of there being some demand for, 09:35.000 --> 09:39.000 can maybe outside of Prague, for example, in the Bohemia region, 09:39.000 --> 09:42.000 they have some integrated transport that they're working on, 09:42.000 --> 09:45.000 but it hasn't quite materialized just yet. 09:45.000 --> 09:48.000 So it's still mostly within that city. 09:48.000 --> 09:50.000 Another example is parlimator. 09:50.000 --> 09:54.000 So parlimator is kind of another civic action initiative, 09:54.000 --> 09:55.000 I guess you would call it. 09:55.000 --> 09:59.000 So parlimator is for parliamentary activities, 09:59.000 --> 10:03.000 so it helps you monitor the activities of a parlimant basically. 10:03.000 --> 10:05.000 So in this case, it was developed within Slovenia. 10:05.000 --> 10:09.000 And what we see here is kind of where the local becomes national, 10:09.000 --> 10:13.000 the national becomes local, and kind of where those lines blur 10:13.000 --> 10:15.000 when it comes to open source software. 10:15.000 --> 10:18.000 What was interesting here was that it was kind of developed predominantly 10:18.000 --> 10:21.000 within a national context, but you see it federated across a number of different 10:21.000 --> 10:23.000 municipalities throughout Slovenia. 10:23.000 --> 10:26.000 So we actually spoke to a number of small villages that were using 10:26.000 --> 10:28.000 this tool in different ways. 10:28.000 --> 10:33.000 And then we also saw how it was later exported to places like Croatia 10:33.000 --> 10:35.000 and Bosnian Herzegovina. 10:35.000 --> 10:38.000 What's also interesting here is how it was developed and maintained. 10:38.000 --> 10:42.000 So parlimator is maintained by a civil society organization. 10:42.000 --> 10:46.000 And that civil society organization promotes digital rights, digital democracy, 10:46.000 --> 10:51.000 but they also develop tools, specifically tools for direct democracy, civic action, 10:51.000 --> 10:54.000 parliamentary monitoring, things like this. 10:54.000 --> 10:56.000 And parlimator is one of their most prominent. 10:56.000 --> 10:58.000 So parlimator in Norway. 10:58.000 --> 11:02.000 So for here, we really see the importance of cross-border open source communities, 11:02.000 --> 11:07.000 but also kind of existing in organic capabilities within public sector institutions. 11:07.000 --> 11:08.000 And how the two can meet. 11:08.000 --> 11:12.000 I'm hoping that one day did you translate gets moved into a foundation. 11:12.000 --> 11:15.000 I think there's a really interesting codebase there that they could evolve 11:15.000 --> 11:20.000 and collaborate on across borders, but it's really allowed them to reduce costs 11:20.000 --> 11:23.000 for their transport planning and completely open source. 11:23.000 --> 11:26.000 Kind of the way by which people are able to navigate in that region. 11:26.000 --> 11:28.000 So yeah, I'll send it back to Johan, 11:28.000 --> 11:32.000 but those are the case studies that we found through the report. 11:32.000 --> 11:35.000 Thanks. 11:35.000 --> 11:41.000 And building on this is coming back to the capabilities. 11:41.000 --> 11:46.000 Municipalities, local governments can build capabilities in different ways, 11:46.000 --> 11:48.000 as the case study shows. 11:49.000 --> 11:53.000 One way is going external, going together. 11:53.000 --> 11:57.000 And this is especially for small medium. 11:57.000 --> 12:00.000 It's about to see this is probably the way to go. 12:00.000 --> 12:05.000 To pull your resources, to come together on the National Local Government Association, 12:05.000 --> 12:07.000 such as always doing Denmark, such as, 12:07.000 --> 12:11.000 some preconceived and examples in many other countries as well. 12:11.000 --> 12:13.000 I do like in France. 12:13.000 --> 12:17.000 But there can also be for international foundations. 12:17.000 --> 12:23.000 If the product escalates or for trusted external surprise. 12:23.000 --> 12:26.000 Or you can be go the internal route. 12:26.000 --> 12:29.000 If you have the muscles, if you have the budget and resources, 12:29.000 --> 12:33.000 and the political commitment, because that's really key. 12:33.000 --> 12:42.000 If you want to go internal and build up substantial internal development and maintenance organization. 12:42.000 --> 12:48.000 This is, I mean, in Sweden, this would maybe qualify to two or three or four municipalities, 12:48.000 --> 12:51.000 I would say. 12:51.000 --> 12:54.000 And then there's these quasi-internal capabilities. 12:54.000 --> 13:00.000 I mean, I think best explained by public, public ICT. 13:00.000 --> 13:04.000 Operator ICT, and in the context of the city of Prague, 13:04.000 --> 13:10.000 where there is a publicly owned service company working on behalf of the local government. 13:10.000 --> 13:18.000 But we can also talk about, is it immune in Belgium, I believe? 13:18.000 --> 13:24.000 It's a service provider owned by, I believe, 140 or something, 13:24.000 --> 13:28.000 Belonian, you know, spouses. 13:28.000 --> 13:35.000 Then there's also the need to look at the community, leverage the resources and engage in the community. 13:35.000 --> 13:39.000 They use them as a force multiplier to come together. 13:39.000 --> 13:44.000 Either through the international foundations or on the national level, 13:44.000 --> 13:51.000 where we differentiate between two types of municipal stewards associations or foundations. 13:51.000 --> 14:00.000 One being somebody who can Sweden, exemplified who looks outside, see what kind of open source solutions are out there. 14:00.000 --> 14:08.000 Next slide, for example, packaging that enabling sharing and reuse for its members. 14:08.000 --> 14:10.000 Then they're upfront. 14:10.000 --> 14:13.000 Or is it due to transparency reasons you want it to be open? 14:13.000 --> 14:16.000 I mean, depending on the gold they're different routes. 14:16.000 --> 14:19.000 Self-assess, what kind of barriers and challenges is. 14:19.000 --> 14:22.000 I mean, we talked about risk versus nism and blah, blah, blah. 14:22.000 --> 14:25.000 These are very general, but you need to look in your own organization. 14:25.000 --> 14:30.000 There's a lot of common themes, but you need to look into your own organization and do the mapping. 14:30.000 --> 14:34.000 And then plan accordingly and acquire the capabilities. 14:34.000 --> 14:43.000 And when you initiate a project, and now we're very open source 101, consider interoperability and reuse from day one. 14:43.000 --> 14:50.000 If it's, if you think about this two years later on, it won't fly in most cases. 14:50.000 --> 14:56.000 Think about, do you want this to expand to become a multi-prost boarder project? 14:56.000 --> 14:59.000 Then you need to think about localization from the start. 15:00.000 --> 15:06.000 In many cases, there won't be funding or priority out from this from one single municipality. 15:06.000 --> 15:11.000 So dedicate funds together to address these requirements early on as well. 15:11.000 --> 15:16.000 And also strive to do an angel development model. 15:16.000 --> 15:27.000 Try to see how you can work with different public procurement frameworks to come up in a more dynamic way to produce and address needs, 15:27.000 --> 15:32.000 and what and features as they arise. 15:32.000 --> 15:36.000 And think about sustainability from day one. 15:36.000 --> 15:40.000 Think if this is an existing upstream community, think about how you can go in the sponsor, 15:40.000 --> 15:48.000 how you, for example, Munich is a sponsor of council or how you do procurement of the service providers of the maintainers of the project. 15:48.000 --> 15:56.000 Directly rotten, then going to a big fancy consultancy, which probably doesn't contribute upstream. 15:56.000 --> 15:59.000 And then also think about the sustainability of the stewards. 15:59.000 --> 16:11.000 Oh, I'm sorry, of the suppliers, that there is a business model for them, that functions that you, that you procure both maintenance and hosting operations, not just one or the other. 16:11.000 --> 16:14.000 Think about stewardship governance from day one. 16:14.000 --> 16:21.000 Think about if there is an existing stewardship association foundation wherever that you can go to, 16:21.000 --> 16:26.000 thinking that your own local government will host this indefinitely. 16:26.000 --> 16:30.000 While others come joining you will probably not be a sustainable model. 16:30.000 --> 16:32.000 I can give you many examples. 16:32.000 --> 16:42.000 Early on consider, again, how you can ensure that the maintenance and development states maintained, 16:42.000 --> 16:48.000 and involve the service suppliers in the maintenance and governance in an appropriate level. 16:48.000 --> 16:54.000 I mean, the local governments, the public entities, still need a safe room for the procurement discussions, 16:54.000 --> 17:01.000 but there can be a level below that where the suppliers are in loop and can influence, 17:01.000 --> 17:07.000 because they have customer awareness from coming from most of the municipalities as well. 17:07.000 --> 17:12.000 So you need to consider them into the governance model. 17:12.000 --> 17:21.000 Yeah, take away digital sovereign needs to be grown, bottom up just as top down, and these were some insights. 17:21.000 --> 17:34.000 Yeah, ultimately what I hope we accomplish with our report is just to give kind of a new and novel kind of framework or way of thinking about decisions a little bit more intentionally as you seek to gain that sovereignty and gain more. 17:35.000 --> 17:42.000 And how you provision your digital infrastructure that maybe this can offer a useful way to think about that either to examine a project director actively, 17:42.000 --> 17:47.000 and start a new project or collaboration in a local government context. 17:47.000 --> 17:52.000 So we are certainly hoping to refine this over time, and if you have any feedback, please get in touch. 17:52.000 --> 17:54.000 But thank you very much. 17:54.000 --> 18:03.000 Okay. Any questions? 18:06.000 --> 18:10.000 The top console and they helped basically kind of maintain and provide console as a service. 18:10.000 --> 18:12.000 There's OS 2 in Denmark. 18:12.000 --> 18:18.000 These seem to be particularly successful models in terms of bringing municipalities on board and allowing them to make their own decisions, 18:18.000 --> 18:24.000 not all municipalities adopt and implement the same solutions, but they are free to do so. 18:24.000 --> 18:28.000 And there's lower cost to them transaction cost by participating in the association. 18:28.000 --> 18:33.000 There's other models emerging, I think you can talk to a few of them. 18:33.000 --> 18:41.000 No, but I think your questions spot on because I mean there are many examples where I have one prominent example is Sweden where. 18:42.000 --> 18:44.000 But coordination is key really. 18:44.000 --> 18:49.000 There need to be some kind of coordination function between the municipalities. 18:49.000 --> 18:55.000 So there's one collective prioritization requirements engineering, road mapping process. 18:55.000 --> 19:02.000 Everyone should be able to do their own procurements just as you do your own development feature quest in the resource project. 19:02.000 --> 19:05.000 But the different tenders need to be coordinated. 19:05.000 --> 19:09.000 And if there's no collective voice, no collective backlog. 19:09.000 --> 19:13.000 And everyone is talking to the to the vendor directly. 19:13.000 --> 19:18.000 Then the vendor will be in power and this will soon relate to risk becoming a single vendor project. 19:18.000 --> 19:22.000 And I have live examples for you of that as well. 19:22.000 --> 19:23.000 Okay. 19:23.000 --> 19:24.000 Thanks.