On 13 June, the World Health Organization (WHO) publicly unveiled its Open Source Programme Office (OSPO). This announcement came during an event focused on the importance and role of open-source technology in enhancing global readiness for emergencies.
The OSPO, the first of its kind among United Nations agencies, is designed to facilitate collaborative solutions for pandemic and epidemic intelligence. It does this by supporting the WHO, public health systems in Member States, and the academic community in their efforts on finding open source solutions.
Samuel Mbuthia, the lead of the OSPO, noted that there have long been advocates for open-source solutions working within the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation.
“The Open Source Program Office formalises these efforts. It brings together and centralises how we do things and ensures that we have efficiency in how we are approaching this work”, Mbuthia stated.
In recent years, the WHO has been actively publishing software on the organisation’s code repository. A large number of these projects have focused on COVID-19 tracing and open data visualisation, but they also include a training platform for health professionals.
Initially, the OSPO will concentrate on addressing the legal, policy, technical, economic, social, and organisational aspects of open-source software (OSS). However, its goals extend beyond these areas. The OSPO also aims to support the development of other open-source digital public goods, promote transparency in the organisation, and refine the tools it employs.
The OSPO office is situated in Berlin, within the WHO Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems (WSE) division’s Pandemic Hub. The construction of the OSPO started with GitHub’s assistance in 2020 and it launched internally last year.
OSPOs, which oversee the procurement, development, and publishing of OSS within organisations, are becoming increasingly popular in both the private and public sectors. If you want to learn more about the benefits of OSPOs for public offices, see the dedicated OSOR section.