Public administrations should enhance their use of open source systems for public administration systems, eGovernment and cloud, says Dietmar Harhoff, director of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. The auditability and openness of open source software is the main reason, but it is also because of efficiency, argues Professor Harhoff. “I definitely plead for a preference for open source systems in public infrastructures.”
“We can inspect it, which increases trust in the services. And in many cases it is already cost-efficient”, Harhoff said on 18 November in Berlin, in the keynote speech at the Offener IT Gipfel. That conference was organised by Büdnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance '90/The Greens) in the German state of Berlin.
The government should also put more emphasis on open ICT standards, Harhoff said. He warned that a mix of standards and technology is included in the 5G telecom network regulations. “In 5 to 10 years from now, this will result in mayor court battles, just like in the past. These could be avoided or made made less with open standards.”
Pinnacle
“Openness is an important principle” said professor Harhoff. The principle pre-dates open source software movement, the push for open data and eGovernment services. He pointed out that communities of innovators were active in the 19th century, and that both industries and science institutues hav used crowdsourcing successfully, years before the take off of open source development communities. “But perhaps the openness paradigm shift is reaching its apex in Information Technology.”
It is the second year that The Alliance & The Greens organised the Open IT Summit. The conference title is a nudge towards the federal government’s IT Summit, which both years took place the day after the Open IT Summit. “The alternative 'Open IT Summit' is needed, because free and open source is not part of Germany's national political agenda”, the political parties explained in 2014.
More information:
Keynote speech by Professor Dr. Harhoff (in German, video)
Offener IT Gipfel website (in German)
Heise news item (in German)
OSOR news item