This page contains information about:
- events organised by OSOR on the use and development of open source software, open source policies in Europe, and sustainability of open source communities in the European public sector;
- open source events that OSOR has participated in.
Each event description includes a summary and links to presentations and recordings when available.
If you are organising or know of any events that could be of interest to OSOR, please contact us at EU-OSOR@ec.europa.eu.
We also invite you to share success stories with us. Have you been involved in a public sector open source project or helped to develop/maintain an open source community in a public sector body? We want to hear from you!
27th September 2023 Solutions for Public Sector
Date: 27 September 2023
Description: The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR) organised its third and last webinar on "Mapping the Public Sector's needs". The event, which took place from 1 to 3pm CET stemmed from input gathered in an expert workshop that took place in July, shining a spotlight on lessons learned throughout years of implementing open source in the public sector by officials and developers from diverse parts of Europe and public service organisations.
This last webinar gathered a wide audience which had the chance to learn about the findings and practical experience of our three speakers
The event's presentation can be found here.
13th June 2023 Mapping the Public Sector's needs
Date: 13 June 2023
Description: The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR) organised its second of three webinar on "Mapping the Public Sector's needs". The event, which took place from 1 to 3pm CET aimed to share the results of our second workshop which gathered public and private sector participants on understanding the needs of the public sector when using open source.
This second webinar reunited previous participants and new attendees. There they had the chance to learn and exchange about two presentations held by open source actors involved with the public sector at different levels.
The event's presentation can be found here.
4th May 2023 Policy & Strategy Aspects of OSS in Public Administration
Date: 4 May 2023
Description: The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR) organised its first of three webinar on "Policy & Strategy Aspects of OSS in Public Administration". The event, which took place from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM CET, aimed to share valuable insights gathered from dialogues with thirty local experts on various challenges and solutions encountered in the field of open source software adoption in public administration. The webinar attracted a diverse audience and provided a platform for knowledge exchange among professionals involved in IT policy and decision-making within the public sector.
The event's presentation can be found here.
FSFE Legal & Licensing Workshop 2023
Date: 19 April 2023
Description: Ciarán O'Riordan presented OSOR's main projects for 2023, the wealth of resources that already exists on the OSOR website, some exerpts of the proposed Interoperable Europe Act and and overview of the utility and the progress being made by the EUPL.
The workshop was organised under the Chatham House Rule.
FOSS Backstage 2023
Date: 13-14 March 2023
Description: The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory (OSOR) Team presented the Interoperable Europe Act (IEA) and its implications for the free and open source software ecosystem. The Act, which the European Commission adopted as a proposal for a regulation in November 2022, aims to reinforce the cross-border interoperability of the public sector in the EU. Practically, it aims to facilitate “the co-creation of an ecosystem of interoperability solutions across the EU”.
The event recordings have been published and you can find the OSOR presentation video in the session description.
FOSDEM 2023
Date: 4-5 February 2023
Description: Ciarán O'Riordan from the OSOR team presented the observatory. He discussed the upcoming series of workshops and webinars as well as the planned handbook on the topic of the procedural and policy aspects of using free software in public administration.
As a part of the session, O'Riordan also presented overall goals and use cases of the Interoperable Europe Act along with the legislative context. This lead into a look at certain details of the text, namely, the clause on share and reuse (article 4), the definition of "open source licence" (article 8(2)(c)), and interaction with the EUPL.
The event recordings have been published and you can find the OSOR presentation video in the session description.
Older events
Description: On 23 May, the OSOR community joined the webinar on public procurement of open source software. During the event, an overview of the soon-to-be-published updated Guidelines on Public Procurement of Open Source Software was provided, followed by presentations by Johan Linåker, senior researcher at the Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), Rasmus Frey, Head of Secretariat at OS2 (Denmark), and Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz, a legal expert and one of the authors of the original Guidelines on Public Procurement of Open Source Software. See the recording of the event and supporting presentation here. |
On 30 November, the OSOR community participated in the webinar on enabling the sharing and reuse with open source. During the event, Kristo Vaher, Chief of Technology for the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, and Matthieu Faure, open source project manager at Adullact (French organisation of local governments), discussed how open source solutions have been shared and reused by public administrations at the national and local levels. See the recording of the event and supporting presentation here. |
On 5 August, the OSOR community joined the webinar on building cross-administration collaboration on open source software (OSS) projects. During the event, Jacco Brouwer, community manager at the Association of Dutch Municiplaities, and Rasmus Frey, Head of Secretariat at OS2, a Public Digitalisation Network uniting public members and affiliated private companies, shared their experiences in fostering collaboration on open source between local public administrations in the Netherlands and in Denmark. See the recording of the event and supporting presentation here. |
On 29 June, the OSOR community got together to discuss how public administrations can adapt to open source software (OSS) development culture. Organised as part of OSOR’s webinar series on public administrations’ journey towards the adoption of OSS, the webinar was an opportunity to hear from two speakers, Stig B. Dørmænen, Senior Adviser at the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency and Philippe Bareille, open source officer at the City of Paris and project manager of Lutece. See the recording of the event and supporting presentation here. |
OW2 is an independent and global open source software community and a non-profit organisation, open to companies, public institutions, academics, and individuals. The organisation aims to promote the development of open source software and to foster a vibrant community and business ecosystem in Europe and worldwide. OW2con is the annual event of the OW2 community, now in its 10th year, bringing together technology experts, software architects, IT developers, project managers and decision-makers from all around the world. On 23 June, the OSOR team presented the "Guidelines for Sustainable Open Source Communities in the Public Sector", a practical tool that can be used by public sector officials interested in establishing or joining open source communities, or by members of such communities. See OSOR's presentation here. |
Between 21-22 June, the 18th edition of the Open and User Innovation (OUI) Conference was held. Organized by the Open & User Innovation Society since 2002, the OUI Conference brings together about 300 researchers from around the world to exchange recent research in open innovation, user innovation, open source/open hardware, collaborative innovation, citizen/free innovation, open innovation policies, and related topics. On 22 June, the OSOR team presented an academic paper on the Guidelines for Sustainable Open Source Communities in the Public Sector. See the Book of Abstracts from the OUI Conference here. |
Public administrations are not alone in their efforts to build sustainable and thriving OSS communities within the public sector. They can find support in already existing OSS communities by relying on their knowledge and experience for guidance. However, the process might be confusing and the first steps of establishing a successful collaboration may seem unclear. At this webinar, participants had the chance to hear from two guest speakers, namely the Co-founder of CivicTech România and Citizen Next, Cristina Moga, and the co-founder of the Decidim project, Arnau Monterde. They shared their own experiences on the practical steps to build up a community, the common roadblocks that can hinder the success of the project and ways to avoid them. Additionally, the webinar shed some light on how to best foster the collaboration between public administration and OSS communities thus creating a local environment that nurtures OSS adoption and development within the public sector. See the summary of the webinar here. |
This interactive session was an opportunity to exchange views on what community sustainability means. We discussed good practices and gathered participants’ needs when it comes to OSS community health and sustainability. We also had the chance to gather useful tips on community sustainability and discuss the experience of participants with colleagues from the public sector and open source enthusiasts. These serveed as input in updating OSOR’s Guidelines for creating sustainable open source communities. Koos Steenbergen, Open Source Project Manager (Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands) and Johan Linåker, researcher (Lund University), shared with us their insights on the sustainability of public sector OSS communities and the good practices to overcome the challenges that may get in the way of the adoption of OSS by public administrations. See the summary of the webinar here. |
DigitALL was a three-day conference organised by the European Commission to mark the closing of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital and the Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens (ISA²) programmes. Against the backdrop of EU public administrations increasingly looking to base their services on open source software, the OSOR team presented how OSOR supports the adoption of open source software within public administrations. The presentation focussed on EU programmes and actions promoting the uptake and development of open source, and how public administrations can make the most of the resources available on OSOR. The OSOR team also presented the OSOR Knowledge Centre and its latest resources. See the summary of the topic of open source at DigitALL here. |
The Latvian Open Technologies Association (LATA) hosted their 14th Annual Conference titled “How to Stay Open in the New Era”. The event featured a broad variety of speakers presenting diverse topics from the open technologies’ world and the presentation of the annual LATA awards. See the recording of OSOR's presentation here. |
EOLE is an international event which aims at encouraging the mutualization and dissemination of legal knowledge related to open licences, as well as the developement and promotion of good practices.. The event is organized as a conference cycle and is coordinated every year with a focus on a different subject matter. This session was focussed on open source governance within public administrations and featured a variety of speakers. The OSOR Team presented its work on the Country Intelligence Reports, with a particular focus on the findings in relation to the governance of open source software across Europe. See the recording of OSOR's presentation here. |
The purpose of the webinar was to discuss and exchange best practices and practical solutions regarding the inclusion of open source software (OSS) in public procurement processes. Webinar participants had the chance to hear from Jani Kylmäaho, Director of Development and Digitalization at National Land Survey (NLS) of Finland, and Lucian Balea, R&D Program Director & Open Source Manager at Réseau de Transport de l’Electricité (RTE) in France, about their organisation’s approach and lessons learned regarding OSS and public procurement. See the summary of the webinar here. |
OW2con is the annual conference of the OW2 open source community. OW2 is an independent, global, open-source software community, gathering numerous open source code developers. The mission of OW2 is to a) promote the development of open-source middleware, generic business applications, cloud computing platforms and b) foster a vibrant community and business ecosystem. At this event, the OSOR team presented its work on the open source policy country intelligence reports (available in OSOR’s Knowledge Centre). See the recording of OSOR's presentation here. |
The purpose of the webinar was to present our work on the Guidelines for Sustainable Open Source Software Communities in the Public Sector, developed together with Dr. Maha Shaikh from King's College London, and to gather feedback on the work so far. Additionally, Fritjof Knier of the Integreat platform in Germany and Nephtis Brandsma of the participatory digital democracy project using CONSUL in Groningen, the Netherlands, presented their experiences of working in a public sector open source project. See the summary of the webinar here. |
The purpose of the webinar was to present our preliminary findings on open source software policies across Europe. We heard from two guest speakers about the impact of formalised open source policies in their home countries, Leonardo Favario from Developers Italia of Italy and Bastien Guerry from DINUM of France. Feedback on the first series of reports was gathered. See the summary of the webinar here. |
The purpose of the webinar was to gather the OSOR community to discuss the functionalities of the OSOR platform and its new Knowledge Centre. Attendees shared their feedback and ideas on OSOR, its scope, and most importantly they shared their needs. See the summary of the webinar here. |
The Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centred on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. At this event, the OSOR team hosted a workshop on sustainable OSS communities in the public sector and to brainstorm key success factors for sustainability. See the summary of the workshop findings here. |
Open Source beyond 2020: Powering a Digital Europe was co-organised by two European Commission’s Directorate-General (DG), the DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology and DG Informatics to discuss challenges and opportunities of open source software and hardware in Europe. At this event, OSOR and EU-FOSSA held a workshop on "Nurturing Open Source Communities" to discuss key sustainability concerns of open source communities. The workshop aimed to find practical solutions to tackle sustainability and funding issues in open source. See the event information here. |
| The purpose of the webinar was to gather feedback from the OSOR community on the proposed new vision and strategy of OSOR, following desk research, workshops, an online survey, a benchmarking exercise, and a stakeholder consultation. As part of the process, policy makers, IT managers, IT developers, consultants, free and open source software advocates and enthusiasts, researchers and students were consulted. |
The Paris Open Source Summit is a key European on open source, free software and open innovation. As an international conference summit, business fair and community event, the Paris Open Source Summit highlights the driving role of open source technologies in current and future digital transformations. At this event, OSOR held a two-hour session dedicated to security and national policies on the use of open source software in public administrations. A range of guest speakers took part, including Emanuele Baldacci (European Commission), Saranjit Arora (European Commission), Rayna Stamboliyska (RS Strategy), Paulo Ribeiro (Portuguese Association of Open Source Enterprises), Marek Przybyszewski (European Commission), Gijs Hillenius (European Commission), Maha Shaikh (King's College), Laurent Joubert (DINSIC), Daniel Melin (Swedish National Procurement Services) and Marek Przybyszewski (European Commission). See the event information here. |