open source policy

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6 remarkable features of the new United Nations open source initiative

The United Nations wants to make technology, software, and intellectual property available to everyone, including developing countries. Open source and free software are great tools to achieve this goal since open source is all about empowering people and global collaboration while protecting the personal data and privacy of users. So, the United Nations and the open source community share the same values. This new open source strategy and policy is developed by the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL). Last month, we had our first in-person meeting in Helsinki in the UNTIL offices. I find this initiative remarkable for several reasons:

CMS To Invest $5+ Billion a Year in Open Source and Cloud-based IT Infrastructure for Medicaid

After more than 40 years of relying on monolithic mainframe platforms to administer its services, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has embraced a new modular, open and agile approach to Medicaid health information technology for the Federal government and States. In many ways, this is the best of what open source advocates and technology innovators could have hoped for when it comes to open source policy from a government agency. According to Andrew Slavitt, Acting Administrator of CMS, the agency will spend more than $5 billion a year to fund this transformation.

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European Commission to Update its Open Source Policy

The European Commission wants to make it easier for its software developers to submit patches and add new functionalities to open source projects. Contributing to open source communities will be made central to the EC’s new open source policy, expects Pierre Damas, Head of Sector at the Directorate General for IT (DIGIT). “We use a lot of open source components that we adapt and integrate, and it is time that we contribute back.”

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India Adopts A Comprehensive Open Source Policy

The Government of India (GOI) has adopted a comprehensive and supportive open source policy. It builds on their earlier efforts to adopt open standards for procurement. As we've seen in other regions, the adoption of such policies often brings out concerns from some quarters who want to spread 'fear and doubt' about the policy. So, what are the facts about the policy, and how does it fit into India's broader economic development strategy? Read More »

Open Source Recognized As A Key Economic Pillar In European Union Study

A September 2021 study on the economic impact of open source software and hardware concluded that open source technologies injected EUR 65-95 billion into the European economy. This study is timely given the current rollout of the European Union's EUR 750 billion recovery investment, which has allotted 20% for digital transformation. Growing political efforts to understand and quantify the importance of open source in realizing EU digital sovereignty accentuate the study's significance. The European Union sponsored the study, which was written by Fraunhofer ISI and OpenForum Europe.

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Open Source Software Is Transforming Healthcare

In the summer of 2022, the UK government and NHS England published its Open Source Policy, stating that open source technology is: Particularly suitable for use within the healthcare industry where, through active collaboration between IT suppliers and user/clinicians communities, solutions can be honed to maximise benefits to delivery of health and social care. The public statement by NHS England is just the latest development in a broader trend: The wholehearted embrace of open source software by the healthcare sector. And no wonder; open source presents myriad opportunities for this most complex of industries, with potential solutions across various sub-sectors. Yes, open source is now powering everything from medical wearables to healthcare human resource management.

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Storming the Government Castle

Open source software seems like a perfect fit for government IT projects. Developers can take advantage of existing code bases and, it's hoped, mold that code to their needs quickly and at less cost than developing code from scratch. Over the last few years, governments in the U.S. and abroad have been more closely embracing open source. However, agencies at all levels of U.S. government are still wary of open source and can be reluctant to adopt it. It's still not easy for government projects to use open source or for developers employed in the public sector to contribute their work to open source project...

Top 10 FOSS Legal Developments of 2014

The year 2014 continued the trend of the increasing importance of legal issues for the FOSS community. Continuing the tradition of looking back over the top ten legal developments in FOSS, my selection of the top ten issues for 2014 is as follows...

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U.S. Government Seeks Reduced Use of Custom Software, Releases New Policy to 'Free the Code'

As I've written before, there has been a shift, going back almost a decade, away from the debate over whether to use open source to a focus on the how to. The release by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the U.S. Federal Source Code Policy on August 8th is the latest manifestation of this shift. It achieves the goal laid out in the Obama administration's Second Open Government National Action Plan (PDF) for improved access to custom software code developed for the federal government. The plan emphasized use of (and contributing back to) open source software to fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. It also furthers a long-standing "default to open" objective going back to the early days of the administration...

U.S. Open Source Policy Seeks to Leverage Code Reuse

George Leopold | Enterprise Tech | August 12, 2016

The Obama administration has released a new federal open-source policy for improving access to software developed by or for federal agencies. The new policy released this week by Tony Scott, the Obama administration's CIO, "requires new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or for the federal government to be made available for sharing and re-use across all federal agencies"...

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Use open source software - it makes things better, says UK

Toby Wolpe | ZDNet | March 18, 2013

Open source gets the official seal of approval from the UK government in new guidelines that mandate its use over proprietary products. Read More »

VA Releases Open Source Policy Memorandum

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has just made public an executive policy memorandum that mandates a thorough evaluation of "Open Source Software (OSS) solutions when [the] VA acquires software." The policy also calls for the Federal agency to consider the use of open source "development practices when VA develops software." The release of this policy places the VA as the leader in government agencies innovating through the use of open source software.

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