WEBVTT

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To the question of open source in the public sector, how is it happening in Europe, but

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also elsewhere, there's a lot of resources on the platform.

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I really encourage you if you've never been there on this website.

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To go check it out, you might learn a few things.

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We produce, for example, country reports that are taking a deeper look at what's happening

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inside the public administration in every country of Europe, right now we're updating

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all of them, actually.

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Our latest, for example, our own Greece and Cyprus, we're always trying to get the context

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in the member states to basically give us the best info they have to be trying to understand

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what's the legislative framework happening there and so on.

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But today, I'm not here to talk about all this work, I'm going to talk about one of

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the latest project, which is the Ozor Handbook.

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And so, as you might have guessed, a Handbook is supposed to be a guide and this one is supposed

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to try and help public administrations and the public sector in Europe to try and use open

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source.

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You might be aware of this, but it's not easy to do open source in the public sector.

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There's many rules, many legislations, many complication that comes with it.

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There's no simple answers, they're not one answer that can easily solve the problem,

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but so we did still and we're still trying to create a guide that can be helpful to many.

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We're not the only one that I've done that, there's many other, but we're not claiming

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that we're doing the best one, but still, I've felt it could be interesting for people

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to learn about the process of how we came up with this, also for other people that would

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be interested to do something similar or to use this resource.

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And so, to give you a small idea of what the Handbook is trying to cover, because there's

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a lot of things to cover when you talk about open source in public sector, here's a

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small chapter overview, so basically, yeah, we're going on there, finding and using open

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source, developing, could developing and participating in communities, as well as the

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question of funding, which is for public sector, really important.

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We're very good example here today in this room of what funding can look like, and I'm

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very happy to be part of the room with people that have been able to set up such interesting

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models of funding for the projects inside the public administration.

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We obviously also try to talk about legal framework, while there's different legal framework

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in every member states, there's some common basis around public procurement and around GDPR

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or other European regulations that you might know of, that still can be relied on at European

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level. And also, the question of how do you structure the use of freedom open source software

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in public sector administration, how do you make it so that the use of open source is stable

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over time, and that is not too much dependent on the political field at the moment or the

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political ideas of the moment of a government change, because those usually quite strongly

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can affect our public administration's work. And so, you might ask how we try and did this,

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but it was quite a long process. We started in 2022 and in 2023, we led a series of events.

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First, we had three closed workshops with experts. We have the chance at also of knowing quite a few

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people now and having built quite the network of open source experts in public administration.

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And so, through these workshops, we tried to gather feedback on what was needed from these people

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that are working public administration when they work around open source. We then add three

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open webinars to share those and get feedback on what we already gathered for knowledge there.

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And based on these six events, we drafted the first version. Obviously, the version is of perfect.

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I've worked on it myself and I must say there must be some revisions. That's why last year

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in December and November, we started a one-month long consultation. During this consultation,

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we opened a front-up ad, led the text open to basically anyone that wanted to add or change anything

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there to propose additional content and to propose modification to question basically the way we

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worked. And we tried to gather that feedback in the end with the final workshop where we also

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just discussed the feedback received so that there wouldn't be just one opinion taken at phase

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value and non-essentially double-checked or triple-checked by many other people. We also managed to

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gather more important revisions and through that, we've managed to, I think, get a more

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representative view of what the community fought of this first draft. I'm seeing a picture

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of being taken and waiting. And so, yeah, we had 10 men contributors during this phase. I don't

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know if any of them are here today, but we're very thankful that these people basically took the

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time to go over the whole document. It's early pages, it's a bit of, it's quite a lot of work, actually.

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And we received 140 comments and input as well, tight schedule and we are not an infinite team,

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obviously. We also worked very much around the fact that community brought review and what I was

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explaining a bit before, right? It is discussion around not only what one person think, but what

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the consensus seems to take away from that. And finally, it was the question of purpose. The

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sandbox is supposed to be shared and used by public administration in all over Europe, by people

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that are not necessarily aware of what open source is, or don't know it very well, that some of them

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have never heard of it, and it's to help people that are aware of it in their administration

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to convince the rest, to convince maybe the director or to convince the management or the

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head of uni, the CIO of the interest and the utility of those. But I think by now you have an

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idea of what the handbook is. There's just a few points I think would be interesting for anyone

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that has done something like this, or that would like to do something like this to remember.

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That's some of the small lesson that we learned from this. First of all, it's the important of

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consultation, because when the first draft came out, we didn't know we would do a revision

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necessarily from the get-go. That came out after, because obviously, and it makes sense now,

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but our first draft, even if it was community-based, because we had six events, and we had

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this workshop, so we talked with experts and so on. It was good to put it under the scrutiny of

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a wider community of people that maybe missed this event and also to just leave it to the public.

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And there's a real question of legitimacy that arose from us, especially because it's a

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European Commission platform, so we want to make sure that we take a humble position there and to

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leave the community to also say their mind. The second one is simplicity. We talk with experts,

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and this experts always have their perspective, which is, yeah, when you explain what an open

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socialized sense is, you should say this word, or you should use this standards to explain

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how to do an open-source repository, or you should explain what this law is instead of another.

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Myself, I need to always step back, even take five step backs, and try to explain things

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way more simply, simply. And I think right now what we're really trying to do is to make sure that

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this is accessible to anyone that doesn't necessarily have the technical knowledge, but also the

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policy knowledge necessary to work around this issue and this questions. And I've had some great

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feedback, notably from people that already did handbook in public administrations, that brought this

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up again and again to say, yes, you need to make it simple, easy to access, and to give the possibility

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for people to access further resources if they need to. And that's where the latest one comes.

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It's community. This handbook is not something that's creating knowledge out of nowhere. There's

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many guide. There's many resources existing already. Our goal is also to aggregate a lot of

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this resources, and I think when talking about public sector use of open source, there's a lot

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of knowledge existing, but I know that a lot of public administration people using open source that

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I've talked with didn't necessarily know, for example, about OSO at all, even though it's been

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existing for 15 years, just like the people working on OSO don't necessarily know about every initiative

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and trying to structure and to aggregate this knowledge is quite the challenge, but also quite the

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stake. So I'll just finish this by offering and asking. If there's any resource, you would recommend

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to someone to try and start using open source. Which one would it be? I'm very happy to receive

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any proposals or any suggestions. And so you can either talk to me outside a bit later,

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or you can also just address them to our email address. And yeah, thank you for your attention.

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I hope this was a bit interesting to any of you. And yeah.

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Wow, you're way more prepared than we are.

