| Digital innovation is vital for global sustainable development, as highlighted at the 2023 UN General Assembly. Digital technology plays a significant role in achieving 70% of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) targets, fostering opportunities, prosperity, and partnerships. With 67% of the global population online and increasing annually, digital services are essential for effective government service delivery. In 2022, ITU and UNDP supported over 100 countries in enhancing connectivity, digital literacy, and safe online practices, driving better public service delivery. Despite progress, challenges such as gender disparities in online access and underutilization of open-source software persist. Open-source can be defined both in a strict technological context, but also in the context of broader processes, workflows, and institutions. There are different kinds of openness that governments can consider incorporating into their procedures and working cultures. For instance, governments can prioritize seeking and acting on feedback, to ensure that residents' needs are addressed as best as possible. They can work with open technology standards, to maximize the interoperability of their systems and ease any processes involving external stakeholders. They can adopt open data approaches to stimulate economic growth and innovation, allowing the private sector to offer supplemental and complementary services to those provided by government. In a recent working paper by the Harvard Business School, estimating the value of open source in society, the authors find organizations would need to spend 3.5 times more on software than they currently do if open-source software did not exist. With thoughtful investments, strong planning and strategy, dedicated resources, and effective change-management, adopting open-source can yield substantial societal and broader benefits. However, despite known advantages of open-source technologies and approaches, they have proven tricky to embark upon for countries. Open-source can require new skill sets, embracing sometimes unfamiliar software development lifecycles, and developing sustainable business plans around the maintenance of systems. Whilst engagement with open-source communities can require new capacities and resources in governments, as well in the local ecosystems.
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Through the Open Source Ecosystem Enabler (OSEE) initiative, ITU and UNDP, with support from the European Commission, aim to foster improved knowledge and action on using open-source for digital public service delivery. One of the main outcomes of OSEE is the establishment of two Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) in two selected countries, one OSPO in each country residing within a host institution. An OSPO is a designated place within an organization that oversees the open-source efforts of that entity or broader ecosystem. The role of an OSPO is to facilitate and coordinate the use, contribution, and release of open-source software. This can include setting open-source policies, ensuring compliance with open-source licenses, guiding the organization and ecosystem on open-source best practices, and fostering an open-source culture. While relatively new in the development landscape OSPOs are becoming increasingly frequent in private and public institutions. They are instrumental in maximizing the benefits that open-source can bring to an organization, such as promoting innovation, transparency, and collaboration, while managing potential risks and ensuring alignment with the organization's goals. The OSPO will be:
- Physically placed in-country, within a hosting institution.
- Staffed with local staff, plus supported by local host institution, consultants, UNDP and ITU.
- Operational for 2 years, with plans to ensure future sustainability.
- Overseen by a local project leader, while overall project management will take place from ITU (Program Coordinator, David Manset, email: david.manset@itu.int) and UNDP (Digital Programmes Strategic Manager, Calum Handforth, email: calum.handforth@undp.org).
Some of the key activities the OSPO will undertake are to: - Map the current national state of open-source in government ministries, departments, and agencies to assess maturity, capabilities, gaps, and design a relevant plan to go forward, either in one selected institution or across the public sector.
- Provide direct technical assistance to government ministries, departments, and agencies on active or planned digital implementation projects using open-source technologies.
- Convene and provide virtual and in person meeting locations for local digital ecosystem stakeholders, and interact through meetings, collaborations, lectures, workshops, and other channels and platforms.
- Raise awareness and build capacity in government ministries, departments, and agencies and local digital ecosystem on opportunities provided by open-source, leveraging state of the art open-source technical, legal, operational, and architectural approaches.
- The OSPOs can either take a broad view and serve the host country, focus on a specific sector, or serve a specific government agency or implementation program. Each OSPO will receive support and guidance from the OSEE project management team (a joint ITU-UNDP initiative) which will provide further connection the global open-source and technology landscape. The OSEE global project will fund the operational cost of the OSPOs covering local staff, events organizations, training costs, external experts, etc. In addition, each OSEE will lead the recruitment of project officers who will serve as the local leads of each OSPO.
Costs not covered by the OSEE global project are: office rental, equipment purchasing, electricity/internet or other infrastructure costs as these are expected to be provided by the host entity as in-kind contributions.
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