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?
Even if an external company makes it, they can add an open source mandate if they want. The US DoD is starting to mandate the usage of open standards for their contractors to increase inter compatibility and ability to extend those systems.
Open source software has some value like making it easier for analysts to find security issues and the act of open sourcing software usually leads organisations to raise the quality because they don’t want to be ashamed of the code. Plus imagine the clout gained by a dev who got a bug fix merged in that millions of citizens get to use.