Vicki E. Allums, Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) will join GOSCON this week to discuss a document released today by CENDI, a cooperative of the major Federal science, technology and information centers. The document titled “Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright and Computer Software: Issues Affecting the U.S. Government with Special Emphasis on Open Source Software”, its principal authors from Defense Information Systems Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is expected to serve as a useful resource as federal agencies increasingly adopt the use of open source software in their IT architectures.
Allums will walk attendees thought the new document including:
US Government policy guidance regarding use of Open Source Software (OSS)
Issues unique to federal agencies distributing OSS
OSS copyright licensing and contractual considerations for the US Government
Advantages and Disadvantages to federal agencies using OSS as an alternative to proprietary technologies.
Hope you can join me at GOSCON this week and not miss these important milestones in the evolution of information technology within the US Government.
Yesterday the White House Office of New Media announced it had migrated its legacy system for whitehouse.gov to Drupal. Let’s be clear that this constitutes a change in plumbing – important plumbing – and not policy – but is a significant and of course highly visible sign that open source software has gone main stream.
Perhaps we can look forward to that day in the future when someone quips “No one ever got fired for implementing Drupal”.
This made yesterday a double red letter day for me and my colleagues in Oregon; an open source application was rolled out in mission-critical environment in government AND it was one the projects supported by Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab (OSL) where I work. Double the satisfaction. Although I don’t talk about it much here – where I focus on government adoption of open source – our core activity at the OSL is supporting many significant open source projects through hosting, administration and development as part of our charter to build community. We’ve been quietly at work since 2003 at this important endeavor.
There is no shortage of news coverage on this event so I won’t rehash here. I’m focused on the upcoming Government Open Source Conference – GOSCON DC, but wanted to share with you that Drupal Association will be present at the event next week – November 5 at the Ronald Regan Building & International Trade Center. On-line registration is still open, hope you will plan to join us if you’re in the area (or make the trip, we have colleagues as far away as Japan joining us for the day!)
GOSCON AWARDS for Open Business Use in Government Nominations are now being accepted for the 2009 Excellence Awards for Open Source Business Use in Government.
It’s true. After five years of operation of the Government Open Source Conference, we’re looking forward to recognizing government employees who have made significant accomplishments in the application of Open Source Technology to meet government business or mission requirements.
To nominate a government employee or project, visit www.goscon.org/awards for information and an on-line submission form. Deadline is Friday Oct 23 2009.
The June 23, 2009 Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) DC Call for Speakers is now open!
The conference will include one day of intense GOSCON program content, exciting keynotes, lightening-round sessions, rich opportunities to network with peers. Topics include:
Open Source in the Enterprise
Sustainability
Policy
Open Collaboration & Federal Grants
Open Health IT- Vertical Showcase on Public Health
Effective E-Government – Gov 2.0
Speaker Guideline and online proposal forms are availlable through the conference Call for Speakers page.
Last week I posted the transcript of Marcos Vinicius Ferreira Mazoni comments addressing the International Open ICT Summit at GOSCON on the sustained government initiative in Brazil to use free open source software and open standards. Mazoni’s encouragement to increase the dialog between countries resonated with participants in Portland and those joining by video conference, representing a half dozen continents.
The original video is now available in Portuguese, with English subtitles and runs five minutes.
I’m working on following up with a number of requests for information post-GOSCON. Always number one on my list; agencies looking to determine if/how they might jump in to using open source software development methodology to produce government-specific applications. These applications are typically costly since the market for such is limited. Developing the same vertical application for all Secretaries of State’s office, for example, is still just fifty customers and makes for a small pool to amortize the cost of commercial development.
The one of the early pioneers of community source model is Dr. Brad Wheeler at Indiana University. In late 2006 the Open Source Lab management team interviewed him by video conference to extract some advice for others on creating governance for a community source project. I came across the resulting debrief and thought I’d put it somewhere it could be shared more broadly. Here it is for download:
I think it’s valuable to consider that the model of shared development suggest benefits beyond sharing the cost and resulting application, such as sharing business practices and processes, knowledge base and documentation. But I digress. We’ll share more from the experts from our Open Government Collaboratives 2008 panel as soon as we get the conference media through GOSCON post-production.
It’s Day One of GOSCON and we’re about to start our distributed discussion “Global Dialogue on the Impact of Open Source Software in Transforming Government”. Marcos Vinicius Ferreira Mazoni shared these comments on the sustained government initiative in Brazil to use open source and open standards – proprietary software not excluded. Comments include his views the value of collaboration and knowledge- Read the rest of this entry »
International Government Open Source Dignitaries Lead Discussion
I promised to share information on the webcast when it became available. Here it is:
Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), Oregon State University
and the World Bank’s e-Development Thematic Group
invite you to join via live webcast a
videoconferenced Global Dialogue between Portland, Washington DC, Moscow,
Colombo, Dakar, Accra, Kigali and Brasilia on:
The Impact of Open Source Software on Transforming Government
12:00 – 3:00 pm (Washington DC time), October 20, 2008
I’ve been talking with some colleagues over the past few months about putting together a group of folks from Washington, D.C. at the World Bank offices there for a joint session during our first ever International Open ICT Summit. I’d met Samia Melhem when we spoke on a panel together at a Gartner Summit a few years ago and we’d been looking to find a way to collaborate since.
The World Bank GLobal ICT Dept is an amazing, distributed team who, in just a few days, have facilitated connections with Brazil, Sri Lanka, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, in addition to D.C. and our own site in Portland Read the rest of this entry »
It’s that time of year….I’m all about delivering a quality Government Open Source Conference in Portland in just a few weeks.
Today I’m pretty thrilled that GOSCON has been approved by the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for up to 4.5 contact hours of continuing education credit towards renewal of the CPHIMS credential.
