open standards

First Open Gov Summit hosted by Zaizi challenges UK public sector to expand its adoption of open source

May 31, 2012 By Navneet Hundal

London – 31 May 2012 – The first Open Gov Summit took place yesterday May 30th in Central Hall Westminster, London. London-based open source consultancy Zaizi hosted the fully-booked Summit, which attracted an eclectic audience that included open source pundits, public sector IT leaders of open source projects, open source software suppliers, consultants and journalists. The delegates came together to take part in an impassioned, critical debate, which examined how transitioning from proprietary to open source software has the potential to transform the UK’s public sector, making it much more efficient and less expensive, while dramatically improving its services. For those unable to make the conference, all content has been posted here http://lanyrd.com/2012/opengovsummit/.

Government and institutional speakers included among others: Mark O’Neill, Head of Service Delivery at the Government Digital Service, Tariq Rashid, Lead Architect at the UK Home Office, Graham Mallin, Head of Enterprise Architecture at the Met Office, Graham Taylor CEO and Co-Founder of OpenForum Europe and Gerry Gavigan, Chair of the Open Source Consortium. Glyn Moody, author of “Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution” (2001), hosted a QA session and there were also panel discussions and ‘Open Mic’ sessions about the opportunities, challenges and myths surrounding the use of open source in the public sector.

Throughout the day, three main themes emerged:

‘Green shoots’ are appearing - Although the UK lags behind the US, European and BRIC countries in adopting open source in the public sector, ‘green shoots’ are starting to appear as more local councils like Bristol City Council and central government departments like the Cabinet Office, the Met Office and the Home Office champion its use through projects designed to inform and engage citizens.

Obstacles to adoption remain - A risk averse public sector culture combined with procurement red tape still prevents many open source providers, which have limited resources, from competing on a level playing field. Proprietary mega-vendors continue to lobby government relentlessly against moving to open source technology and perpetuate myths that technology is not secure or reliable. Also, many felt that UK schools and universities needed to adapt their IT curricula so that more young people develop open source skills.

Government will ultimately do the right thing - Despite the obstacles, most speakers and delegates agreed that the tide is turning and in due course, there will be so many high-profile case studies of open source being used in mission-critical public and private sector scenarios around the world that the UK not want to be exposed for failing to move with the times and take advantage of the huge potential savings to the taxpayer. The open source myths are being debunked as more private sector companies from Amazon to Google to the New York Stock Exchange run their mission-critical systems on open source software.

Following yesterday’s success, Zaizi, which hosted the event in partnership with its sponsors Alfresco, Red Hat, eXo Platform and Ephesoft has confirmed that it will run Open Gov Summit again in 2013. To register your interest in sponsoring or attending next year’s event, please contact Zaizi.

Aingaran Pillai, CEO of Zaizi and organizer commented: “In this first event we placed ourselves at the heart of what we hope will be an conversation with government, industry and development communities about how to practically apply open source in the UK’s public sector. This was a personal highlight for me because I have dedicated most of my career working to implement and promote the benefits of open source software especially in government.”

About Zaizi

Zaizi is an experienced information and technology consulting firm specialising in enterprise content management (ECM) and document capture solutions. Through strategic partnerships with eXo, Alfresco and Ephesoft, Zaizi delivers a complete range of enterprise content solutions, including document and web content management systems, scanning solutions, portals, and corporate intranets and extranets. Our technical expertise and innovative approach leverages rich internet applications, social networking platforms and cloud infrastructure to deliver scalable, on-demand solutions.

Media contact
Sarah Lafferty
07917 222 144
slafferty@roundearthconsulting.com

How government and citizens can benefit from Open Standards & Open Source Softwares

May 16, 2012 By Navneet Hundal

First of all, I’d like to start this blog by pointing out that Open Source Software (OSS) and Free Software are not the same thing.

As Carla Shcroder mentioned in her blog

Think of Free Software as being a social movement fueled by ethics, while open source is a development methodology

Why is it important to know the difference between Free Software and Open Source Software in government?

Its easy to imagine, having worked in government myself, how anything that is termed ‘Free’ might make some people uneasy. It raises concerns, ethical issues and for some reason triggers discomfort.

I myself, experienced a backlash for offering a free social media course for public servants. Having been invited to consult and speak at various social media in government events and work on projects for high profile government organizations, I didn’t think that my offer would trigger any uneasiness. However this was the first time that I had used the term ‘Free’ for a project and little did I know, that would be the downfall of it.

Being a researcher, my gain for offering free advise is so I get to share my previous research findings and improve on it in a constructive manner and have an opportunity to understand the current and future challenges that government faces when dealing with social media. And in return, I would have publicly outlined a social media strategy based on a practical view of the situation in my blog.

However that never happened, because people are afraid that when something is free, its too risky, it cannot be trusted and of less quality.

Is Free = Risky?

Wrong, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Sometimes people give something out for free because they are passionate about it or would like to volunteer and contribute to a cause for the betterment of the society. Same goes with the term free software. The open source software term sometimes gets used interchangeably with free software and at the back of some peoples mind, free often means, less quality and not to be trusted.

So its important for people to understand the difference here.

Open source software is software whose source code is freely available (i.e., without any requirement for payment or any other obstacles) for anyone to inspect and study.

Most open source software is also free software. Free software is software for which everyone has the right not only to inspect and study the source code but also to use it for any desired purpose without monetary or other restrictions.

Free software is always also open source, open source software does not necessarily have to be free software. That is, software can be open source without granting its users the additional freedoms that free software guarantees. Source

What is a Source Code?

I think one of the other thing that we must understand before we go further is, what is a source code? The source code is the glue that is holds a software together. It is the life of the software, it is required for the software to live and breathe. Without it, the software will be non-existent.

Source code is the version of software (usually an application program or an operating system) as it is originally written (i.e., typed into a computer) by a human in plain text (i.e., human readable alphanumeric characters). Source code can be written in any of the several thousand programming languages in existence, but it is usually written in one of the dozen or so of the most popular (particularly C, C++ and Java). Without source code it is very difficult to study, modify and improve software. Source

What I would like to highlight here is that last statement…

Without source code it is very difficult to study, modify and improve software.

And with proprietary software, that is what you DON’T GET.

The future cannot exist without the past. Re-thinking digital public services.

I think the fundamental key to how government and citizens can benefit from open source softwares is not a hard one to crack.

In history, we often educate and better ourselves based on lessons we’ve learnt from the past. We understand the past, to understand the present. We understand the present, to understand our future. For OSS’s, agility is key and not having the ability to see or understand the past source codes and learn from them, can be detrimental to the delivery of digital public services.

Imagine, if only the manufacturer of a rifle were allowed to clean, fix, modify or upgrade that rifle. The military often finds itself in this position with taxpayer funded, contractor developed software: one contractor with a monopoly on the knowledge of a military software system and control of the software source code. This is optimal only for the monopoly contractor, but creates inefficiencies and ineffectiveness for the government, reduction of opportunities for the industrial base, severely limits competition for new software upgrades, depletes resources that can be used to better effect and wastes taxpayer-provided funds. Source

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier points out, true security is never achieved by attempting to conceal any security defects that a program may have, but rather by allowing anyone interested to seek out these flaws and eliminate them.

Open source software makes this possible. Many government agencies will not use a piece of software in a security-critical application unless the agency itself can examine the source code for flaws; in the case of proprietary software, this often means difficult and costly negotiations allowing the agency access to the source code. If open source software is available to fill such a need, source code is available at no extra cost to the government, and in many cases the software is already more secure.

The information and cultural revolution

We are on the verge of a information and cultural revolution. We are on the precipice of putting all the pieces together to sew our shared transparent social fabric. The UK Government has been keen to be as transparent as possible in recent years because the belief that transparency not only makes it easier for citizens to communicate with government and receive public services, but also create efficiencies and innovation where once thought not possible. This has been proven true with the open data movement.

Some people may think that technology advances will and can happen with or without them. But the truth is, for digital public services, the government purchasing authorities can make technology advances in public service by making the right the decisions to lower the cost, increase the reliability, security, and inject the ability to modify software to suit specific needs. The biggest challenge here is getting technology to be more USEFUL to us and the only way that will happen is if we make them better and our source codes can start learning from past errors.

Procurement Challenges in Government

Often enough, the battle of getting OSS into government falls at the first hurdle. As Dr. David Wheeler of the Institute for Defense Analysis said at ‘The Government Open Source Conference’,

Too often, government procurements are worried only about the current budget cycle. In software procurements, this can be deadly. Future costs are almost always higher than the first-year costs. The mismatch between software lifecycles and hardware lifecycles can play havoc with a TCO analysis. Perhaps most important, if you aren’t accounting for switching costs, you’re missing a huge cost driver: how expensive will it be to exit the solution in question? Source

Luckily enough, Wheeler also mentioned of a way of overcoming the procurement dilemma that suggest that RFPs are “wired” for a proprietary solution.Wheeler reminded the audience that in many cases, the RFPs aren’t wired deliberately. It’s far more likely that the procurement officials are simply unaware of the open source alternatives and inadvertently create requirements that preclude their use. He recommended responding to the Requests for Information (RFIs) that preceed most RFPs. This way, the officials can be exposed to the open source alternatives. Source

The relationship between Open Standards, Open Data and Open Source Software and how we can recycle digital waste and save taxpayers money

Talking about the exiting a solution, have a listen of this video why Open Standards is important and why OSS can save taxpayers money.

Benefits of an Open Technology Development (OTD)

OTD is an approach to software/system development in which developers in different military, federal, commercial and possibly public organizations can collaboratively develop and maintain software or a system in a decentralized fashion. OTD depends on open standards and interfaces, open source software and designs, collaborative and distributed online tools, and technological agility.

I would like to point you to this document and highlight the Open Technology Development (OTD) key benefits written by the US Assistant Secretary of Defense (Networks & Information Integration) (NII) / DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L).

Key benefits of OTD are:

Increased Agility/Flexibility: Because the government has unrestricted access and rights to the source code developed with taxpayer funds, that source code can be made discoverable and accessible to program managers, civil servants and contractors alike, increasing the potential of matching a need or requirement to an existing source code base that provides a large proportion of the solution that can be improved or enhanced to meet a new mission. Likewise, pre-existing government-funded components from different programs can be assembled without unnecessary costs and delays untangling intellectual property rights to determine what is and is not allowed. Instead of having to start from scratch to develop or enhance a capability, the government can reuse what it has already paid for and that works and draw from a broad base of developers and contractors who are familiar with the source code and component and can rapidly assemble, merge and modify existing systems and components with other existing source code.

Faster delivery: Because developers only need to focus on changes to, and integration of, existing software capabilities instead of having to redevelop entire systems, they can significantly reduce the time to delivery for new capabilities. Even when a module or component is developed from scratch to replace an outdated one, such re-development benefits from open interfaces and standards that have a proven track record in the systems with which it interacts. Enabling cross-pollination of source code that is owned and paid for by taxpayer funds, development and deployment time can be significantly reduced.

Increased Innovation: With access to source code for existing capabilities, developers and contractors can focus on innovation and the new requirements that are not yet met by the existing source code capabilities. This agility is particularly important because of a projected shortfall in the number of U.S. citizens with engineering and computer science degrees who will be clearable to work on military projects in the coming decades [National Academies 2008]. As a greater proportion of software engineering degrees are held by foreign nationals, and U.S. programmers are lured by innovative and lucrative work in the private sector, the military will face a long-term shortage of software engineers to work on military-specific systems. The Defense Department must therefore focus on the long-term challenge of generating higher levels of innovation out of a more limited pool of human talent and skill. It will be important to leverage that human capital by having engineers focus on the 10% of source code that actively improves a system without also being required to re-create the 90% of capability that already exists.

Reduced Risk: creating new capabilities from scratch is riskier than re-using existing capabilities that are already proven and well understood. By re-using existing capabilities in the form of government-owned source code, interfaces and systems, developers can spend more time and resources on the riskiest parts of the implementation.

Information Assurance & Security: One of the biggest values of open source development is enabling wider community access to software source. In this manner bugs become shallow and thus more easily found. Wider access to software source code also is key for forming and maintaining a software security posture from being able to review software source code to seeing what is actually present within that software.

Lower cost: The first cost to fall by the wayside with OTD is the monopoly rent the government pays to contractors who have built a wall of exclusivity around capabilities they’ve been paid by the government to develop. They may have internally developed source code (IRAD – internal research and development) that’s valuable, but in an OTD system that code has been modularized so the government can make a rational decision about whether they want to re-license it for a new project or pay to develop a replacement. The entire value of the government’s investment hasn’t been voided by the mingling of IRAD into a government-funded system as a means of ensuring lock-in to a particular vendor. With unlimited rights and access to government-funded source code, the government can draw on a broader pool of competitive proposals for software updates and new capabilities that leverage current systems. The elimination of monopoly rent, combined with greater competition, will drive down costs and improve the quality of resulting deliverables, because any contractor who works on a system knows that they can be replaced by a competitor who has full access to the source code and documentation.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said “The gusher [of money] has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time.” DoD needs a more efficient software development ecosystem – more innovation at lower cost. OTD squeezes financial waste out of the equation by reducing lock-in and increasing competition.

Discover more at the Open Gov Summit 2012

The Open Gov Summit 2012

Given all the information we have today and the one I have presented here, it is imperative that we take the next step and start discussing how we can really invigorate and create sustainable softwares and transparency in government. You can do this today by registering for the Open Gov Summit that will be happening on the 30th May 2012.

Government and institutional speakers include among others: Mark O’Neill, Proposition Director for Innovation and Delivery at the Government Digital Service, Tariq Rashid, Lead Architect at the UK Home Office, Graham Mallin, Head of Enterprise Architecture at the Met Office, Graham Taylor CEO and Co-Founder of OpenForum Europe and Gerry Gavigan, Chair of the Open Source Consortium.

Hope this was useful.

Liz Azyan

Filed Under: Open Government, Open Source Software, open standards Tagged With: open government, open source softwares, open standards, transparency

What Open Standards & Open Source mean to government and citizens

April 18, 2012 By Navneet Hundal

Over the past week, we have been inundated with articles surfacing in response to the UK government’s first open standards roundtable discussion hosted by the Cabinet Office that was held on the 4^th of April. It was described as “a resounding call to scrap the government’s policy on open standards“, as Mark Ballard from Computer Weekly wrote here in an article titled “Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown”.

The Cabinet Office also wrote its version of events in this article “Are open standards a closed barrier?” The article included this statement…

The majority of the attendees considered that open standards, as defined in the policy, would close down the Government’s ability to benefit from an alternative standards development model and limit our choice – not least because they considered that the definition excludes standards that are made available on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

This seemed to be a big U-turn and possibly not a big surprise to individuals like @GlynMoody, who wrote earlier this year, UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed and also its follow up article published just yesterday How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards I.

Another excellent article written by Simon Wardley also expressed frustration of the first roundtable event in his article titled “The Unpleasant Whiff of Lobbyists”. He too echoed @GlynMoody’s statement in an excerpt from his post below…

OK, so lets be clear. In one year we’ve gone from overwhelming support in a wide survey for both the open standards definition and those open standards be royalty free to attendees of one roundtable arguing that such open standards could be detrimental to competition and innovation precisely because they’re royalty free.

I have a reasonably good sense of smell for the influence of paid lobbyists. This smacks of an OOXML re-run.

If you’re in the UK tech scene then wake up! In my honest opinion, this feels like of our Government being lobbied that royalty free Open Standards will hurt competition & innovation in the software world. Expect lots of mock academic research and claims that adopting open standards will cost tens if not hundred of millions ..

Support for Open Standards by Richard Harvey

Given the outcry from open standards practitioners, evangelists and enthusiasts, Richard Harvey (Linux admin – @ric_harvey) has setup a website to help people to answer the consultation here – Support for Open Standards, which I urge you to join and answer as Dr. Jeni Tennison / @JeniT from the TSO did here and showed on her blog UK Open Standards Consultation blog.

I would also like to repeat Jeni’s call to answer the consultation with the three steps below

Respond to the consultation — made even easier by this response form developed by Ric Harvey
Attend the events — these seem pretty full now, but try to get in if you can
Spread the message — blog and tweet and write to raise awareness of the importance and impact that this consultation could have

Keep government tech open source

There is a fantastic interview with Richard Harvey in the .net magazine website about his efforts. My favourite bit was where he answers the question fron .net “On open source, the anti-arguments sometimes centre around longevity and quality. How can and should the government protect its investments in terms of deciding what products and technologies to use?”

And Richard answers

We need to look at the bodies that govern the standards and software that is proposed. If you take HTML5 as an open standard, you can see it’s got a good structure around it in the form of W3C. When looking at open source products there are also plenty of fantastic examples of commercially supported projects where you are free to use the software but can buy support as a safety net if needed.

My own response to the consultation includes recommendations about choosing software and standards carefully, and potentially setting up an advisory panel to aid with this. This should be a coalition of industry spokespersons, engineers and developers. You need a range of skills to make sure the right decision is made.

I couldn’t agree more with his answer. We need this advisory panel to steer our way into a more transparent and open government. Our government now, is in a transition to make public services more effective and efficient by becoming more open. Therefore we need to start envisioning what the big picture of an OPEN GOV looks like.

The bigger picture of OPENNESS

We started off with the social media movement, where the government wanted to communicate more openly and effectively with citizens using freely available platforms. Then we realized we had to be able to use data and make it readable in open formats so anybody can access, use and do innovative stuff with them. And now we are onto the next step of transparency where open standards is now on stage to ensure the momentum for openness and usability is carried throughout government practices.

Next, we will be realizing the possibilities of open source softwares (OSS) being used to utilize for big and complex government projects. Just think about it. We started the chain of events with open communication with the public and opening up our data. We then started to create partnerships and bridges between government agencies, industries and citizens by exchanging data and documents using open standards.

All of this comes down to not only the ability for government to be more effective and efficient in its delivery of service, but to also come at a must smaller cost to the government. If you want to be OPEN and effective in a society that is going through a recession, you’ve got to be affordable and interoperable in the long run!

The lack of open standards impact on citizens when they need it the most

In any case, where we are talking about campaigning or supporting a cause, we often talk ‘up’ our causes. So you’d probably be expecting me to talk about how wonderful open standards and open source are to you, me and the government. But I’d like to take a different approach and take a real life scenario, where actual lives are affected by the lack of open standards in and between government agencies. Because there is no greater time where citizens will need the government’s assistance other than when they are in desperate need of information and help.

Take scenario number 1: Hurricane Katrina

In ther aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), established an internet site for victims of hurricane to register for aid. Unfortunately not everyone was able to access that over the internet because of incompatibility problems. Those using the Linux operating system, some using a Macintosh, or anyone really using the Firefox browser was unable to register for aid online.

So there was interoperability on the physical layer, there was interoperability at the network layer and the transport layer and the session layer. But there was a incompatibility of applications at the application layer, which prevented exchange of information over the internet for these hurricane victims. Fortunately you could still register through the telephones, so there was the mechanism but there was a denial of access due to applications.

Take scenario number 2: Thailand’s Tsunami

Another surprising example of government impeded in serving its citizens because of these incompatibilities, specifically between standards, involving the government of Thailand exchanging electronic documents after the Tsunami.

Some information could not be exchanged, because they used throughout different government agencies, different document formats. So this situation contributed to the government launching an open standards initiative so this will never happen again.

(Source: http://youtu.be/sqMR6pe0N_g)

Why Open Standards are important

Key points from this video:-

It is important from a long term perspective of humanity recording its knowledge and sharing it and transfering it to the next generation also.
Standards can be done in several ways. And the best way is if there are three main criterias; everybody can read it, everybody can implement it and everybody can use it for free.
Your data can be opened in multiple platforms, so its all interoperable. And its about keeping that interoperability available so no matter what vendor you as a consumer choose, your data is not going to be lost when you send it to someone else who’s using a different vendor’s product.
Open standard is a standard where the actual standard itself is maintained by a reputable, vendor neutral international body.
If something is stored in open standard, there is a very, very high probability that the data can be retrieved 10 years down the line, 20 years down the line, 100 years down the line.
As we go into the future where there is an enormous amount of government to government collaboration and government to citizens interactions, that data cannot be in proprietary formats.
No one should ever be restricted to their ability to access public information based upon the kind of technology they use to access that information or the manner which it’s saved. So certainly in the context of public documents, it is absolutely essential that those documents be saved and stored in an open manner

It certainly makes a good argument for open standards and why we should fight for this cause and answer the call for action.

Richard Hillesley wrote a great article about why he thinks open standard are always a good idea and I would like quote him here

In a world where people exchange information in many different languages and dialects, it is important that there are common reference points that make interaction possible. Once the basic rules are followed, everything else becomes possible. Open standards give us the means to talk to one another whatever applications, operating systems or computer language we use. “If I can’t talk the language of your proprietary format, I can’t hear what you say”, and conversation becomes impossible.

Make conversations possible!

So, echoing Richard’s call, let’s make conversations possible not just through social media platforms and mobile applications… With government counterparts now bridging the digital divide in our society, let’s not make their efforts meaningless by lifting the bridge back up with unaccessible documents and information. Support for Open Standards! If anyone wants me to publish their response on this blog, feel free to send if over to me and I will happily publish it!

Some other blog posts worth noting here are: -

It is clear from these articles that there is a great call for the issues surrounding open standards in government to be discussed in a more transparent and open platform. I, myself have been strucked by recent events and am in the middle of organizing an event (@OpenGovSummit & website) that will endeavor to gather the best individuals who can advise and talk about open standards and the use open source software in government in a more proactive and honest manner. Please get in touch with me, if you wish to get involved.

To make sure you don’t miss out on any other bits of information concerning open standards and open source in the UK government, please make sure to follow the Cabinet Offices dashboard on NetVibes.

Hope this was useful!

@Liz_Azyan
@OpenGovSummit

Filed Under: Open Data, Open Source, Open Source Software, open standards Tagged With: open source, open standards, roundtable consultation, uk government