Open Government 2011Policy,Technology, and Community

in the US & Canada

Presented to the opengov & e -par t i c i pa t ionConference on September 22, 2011 in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Deborah BryantPublic Sector Communities Manager

Oregon State University Open Source Lab

CitizenAdvocates

Civil Sponsors

AcademiaIndustry*

PolicyMakers

OpenGov Ecosystem

*entrepreneurs

Open Analog

Policy Frameworks Exist for Open Gov at national and local levels

Open + Technology

sunlightfoundation.com

est. 2009

est. 2006

Motivators to Open Gov - Gov view

• Growing Public Expectation

• Economic Downturn; citizen empowerment to self serve (DIY - Do it Yourself Movement)

• Political Caché

Federal and StateInspiration

Open Data Cities

Citizen initiative: A serious heat-wave

inspired realtime use of data for public places to

cool off.

Burning Question? call 311

Burning Building? call 911

Open Data Challenges • Uptake of “donated” applications (apps)

• Concerns by government “data owners”

• do not envision the data as useful if released

• inadequate time to ensure data is updated to meet public expectations

• unintended consequences (wrong info released in wrong hands)

• Where data is an existing revenue source for an agency (provincial issue)

Variants: US Open Gov Initiativescode • democratic process

Open Source Digital Voting Foundation

Industry Participation

“"There's money to be made out of the billions of data points, there's also money to be made out of the personal service points," (a corporate official) said. He confessed he had no answers as to how to do this.””

May 2010 The Register article entitled “Data Gold Rush in Silicon Valley”

D.C. Entrepreneurs

Open meets Open

Why Open Source & OpenGov

• Shared values

• openness

• transparency

• meritocracy of ideas

• at the core, in the public interest

• Right tools for the job

• highly available

• affordable

• open standards + open source = interoperability

Good cultural fit.

• Study shows On-line community members are more engaged

Survey of Open Gov Orgs

40%

40%

20%

Non-ProfitGrass Rootsother

Demographic(all U.S)

Informal Survey of Open Gov Orgs

Yes No

100%

Use OSS in operations

75%

25%

Yes No

Have OSS tech community members

volunteering

100%

Yes No

Use OSS in their mission

US OpenGov Take-Aways

• Open Government thrives where citizen interest is met with public sector support, and accelerates when open source innovation is applied.

• The open source community can be (may already be) an asset to any region.

• Commitments on some level from government (funding, leadership) must be made for initiatives to succeed.

For Further InformationDeborah Bryant

Public Sector Communities Manager

Oregon State University Open Source Lab

Email: deborah@osuosl.org

Twitter: @debbryant

Skype: bryantdeb

irc: debz0r

Web Site Information:

The Open Source Lab: osuosl.org

The Government Open Source Conference: goscon.org

Professional blog: bryantsblog.com

Supplemental Materials

OSU Open Source Lab

Open Source Lab (OSL)

• The OSL is a unique facility housed within the Oregon State University administrative computing facilities.

• The OSL data center provides platform stability and support for many of the world’s largest community-based Open Source applications

• Host over 140 servers, 40 major projects including Mozilla, Apache, OpenOffice, OLPC, Linux Foundation, Drupal

• It is a renown global resource, distributing open source software (millions of downloads a day)

• OSL added its Public Sector program in 2005 and created the Government Open Source Conference

• www.osuosl.org

Open Source Educational Resource for Government

• Education & Discussion for Senior Public Sector Information Technology Management

• Brings together public and private sectors

• Produced by OSU OSL : www.goscon.org

Business Ops • Custom Software Development

• Staff Augmentation

• Software as a Service

• Technical training

• Workshops and events (including public code sprints and “barcamps”

• Creative agency engagement including social media/staff training