Denmark's public sector is increasingly turning to open source ICT solutions, according to a guide on building open source communities in public administration. "It is not surprising, because when done right, open source communities allow even limited resources to stretch far."
"This guide disseminates the experiences of many authorities that have already taken this course. We aim to get even more authorities to embark."
The report was published on Monday by Denmark's Agency for Digitisation. It is made available at 'Digitaliser', the agency's online community focussing on IT modernisation in Denmark's public administrations. The guide is an initiative of the Knowledge Centre for Open Source and Open Standards (Videncenter for open source og åbne standarder), one of the communities on Digitaliser.
The 50-page document is divided in 8 chapters, explaining how to set-up sustainable communities involving public administrations, ICT vendors and open source software developers. Chapters explain on ways to fund such activities, what are best practices in organisation, and how to communicate on the project. There is a chapter on how to choose an appropriate software licence, and another on tool selection.
For beginners
By documenting these experiences, the knowledge centre wants to enable more successful open source development projects. "It explains what it means what it is to create a community around an ICT solution, and shows the benefits of such software development. The guide should be useful for public administrations that are starting development of a new solution, or that are looking into re-using solutions shared by others.
The manual can also be used by public administrations that want to make their solution available to others. The target audience includes administrative and economic decision makers in the public sector, IT project managers and IT architects. "We assume IT developers to already understand the subject, but this guide hopefully further inspires them and helps them to link with public sector open source development communities."
More information:
Opbygning af open source-software-communities i det offentlige (in Danish, PDF)
Digitaliser announcement (in Danish)
Knowledge Centre for Open Source and Open Standards (Open source-software i det offentlige) community (in Danish)