I’ve been thinking about transparency and security in the public sector. Do you think all government software and platforms should be open source?
Some countries have already made progress in this area:
- Estonia: digital government services with open and auditable APIs.
- United Kingdom: several open source government projects and systems published on GitHub.
- France and Canada: policies encouraging the use of free and open source software in public agencies.
Possible benefits:
- Full transparency: anyone can audit the code, ensuring there is no corruption, hidden flaws, or unauthorized data collection.
- Enhanced security: public reviews help identify vulnerabilities quickly.
- Cost reduction: less dependency on private vendors and lower spending on proprietary licenses.
- Flexibility and innovation: public agencies can adapt systems to their needs without relying on external solutions.
Possible challenges:
- Maintenance and updating of complex systems.
- Protecting sensitive data without compromising citizen privacy.
- Political or bureaucratic resistance to opening the code.
Do you think this could be viable in the governments of your countries? How could we start making this a reality globally?
The issue is that most us government software…is actually a contractor. For example, oracle/PeopleSoft is huuuuuge in government. And it will never be open source with that company.
Another huge powerhouse is Acela. Of you do local government, its probably running Acela. Should it be open source, sure! But the software itself is very contractor or SaaS based.
I wish there was more open source for the good of the people, but contractors give excellent scapegoats if something goes wrong. Its not the governments fault the system was down you see, its the contractors fault, go yell at them. If they succeed, great look at all the things we did!
The contractors would merely need to use/develop open source software if they want their cushy government contracts. Seems doable to me.