WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:11.240 Okay, my name is Johny Nock, I'm a senior researcher at the National Research Institutes 00:11.240 --> 00:12.760 in Sweden and London University. 00:12.760 --> 00:21.400 I'm going to give some insights and examples of how developmental collaboration can be happening 00:21.400 --> 00:24.920 in public sector, open source products. 00:24.920 --> 00:30.080 It's a study I did together with forensic colleagues from Spain and London, we're 00:30.080 --> 00:35.920 Sweden as well, who have the University and other places, Johny Nock, from Cisco UNAS, 00:35.920 --> 00:38.360 Satchegu and Gregorio. 00:38.360 --> 00:46.000 We looked at, we crawled, seven different public sector, open source products, catalogs, 00:46.000 --> 00:52.400 and then we find a quite narrow sample of what we identified as quite mature cases. 00:52.400 --> 00:59.760 So we did a lot of interviews, we did a lot of mining, etc. to really find some insights 00:59.760 --> 01:06.480 and examples to provide others in how you can go about and with doing open source collaboration 01:06.480 --> 01:11.920 development in the public context and how that may differ towards the more general, 01:11.920 --> 01:26.880 there may be informal practice that you can find in more products in the world. 01:26.880 --> 01:33.680 So the cases we looked at was one example was the energy plus project, it's a simulation 01:33.680 --> 01:40.240 program for energy consumption in the houses from the US, we looked at those two forms 01:40.240 --> 01:49.800 from our day insurance and we looked at Oscari, map application platform, powering the 01:49.800 --> 01:58.360 geoportal in Finland, we looked at geotrick, platform for managing and enable exploration 01:58.360 --> 02:04.800 of national parks in France, we looked at the Mars simplifier, we could call it an 02:04.800 --> 02:14.440 resource platform by the room in France and we also looked at the IOAP, so it's an entry app 02:14.440 --> 02:23.240 in Italy for accessing these little public services. 02:23.240 --> 02:29.760 So looking at the development practices, what we saw was that quite a line with open source 02:29.840 --> 02:36.160 in a lot of context is that the development was very centered to a very few set of people, 02:36.160 --> 02:44.640 a core team typically between two to 15 in the most cases for doing most amounts of development 02:44.640 --> 02:49.000 as we can see in a lot of other contexts as well. 02:49.000 --> 02:57.200 Generally an open development happening on geotrick in these cases and they used very formal, 02:57.200 --> 03:05.120 very structured age-old processes, very detailed quality insurance processes and this 03:05.120 --> 03:10.280 aligns quite well because all the development, there wasn't really a lot of development 03:10.280 --> 03:17.600 happening like the cross organization, most of it was happening within the main public entity 03:17.600 --> 03:22.720 or divender doing that development, so there wasn't a lot of community development in 03:22.800 --> 03:26.800 these cases that we looked at. 03:26.800 --> 03:31.080 Stuffed was generally reported high-quality, high-level user build in some which could refer 03:31.080 --> 03:32.080 to that. 03:32.080 --> 03:39.320 We looked at the different types of sponsorships and one kind of sort of how who develops 03:39.320 --> 03:43.160 or who funds the development and who drives the development basically. 03:43.160 --> 03:52.000 One major part was where it's really centered to a certain few or one or a very resourceful 03:52.000 --> 04:02.920 organization, speed up public service company or a ministry or something. 04:02.920 --> 04:07.880 It's typically a very business critical, this application for them, so it's really 04:07.880 --> 04:13.560 warrants a major investment for them in these applications. 04:13.560 --> 04:19.200 And then the more decentralized model where you have a lot of different public entities 04:19.280 --> 04:24.960 collaborating co-funding development, driving the development more in a community way I would 04:24.960 --> 04:32.160 call to get away with service providers in the cases we looked at. 04:32.160 --> 04:39.520 In terms of development resources, again, it was typically performed within one organization, 04:39.520 --> 04:48.400 one way or the other, either by the public institution in the self or through a vendor. 04:48.440 --> 04:57.600 In case was the Pagropa where in other cases the resources was procured in one way or the 04:57.600 --> 05:07.240 other, typically consultants in some cases, really highlighting this general notion of outsourcing 05:07.240 --> 05:14.480 and trusting yourself on external capabilities, especially on a municipal level. 05:14.480 --> 05:19.040 The Pagropa is quite interesting because they are the output of an experiment really 05:19.040 --> 05:26.480 where Italy or the government wants to build their own capabilities, build their own development 05:26.480 --> 05:30.640 teams and grow vendor independence long term. 05:30.640 --> 05:37.360 So that was a unique in this case, but a very interesting approach. 05:37.360 --> 05:43.720 And again, all across suppliers was really highlighted as key for the sustainability of these 05:43.720 --> 05:44.720 projects. 05:44.720 --> 05:49.480 There needs to be suppliers out there that can support the development because again, in 05:49.480 --> 05:55.680 most cases, like Pagropa, you were a client on either doing consultants or having vendors 05:55.680 --> 05:58.120 to develop the software. 05:58.120 --> 06:03.600 So for the projects to stay sustainable, you need to have suppliers with a sustainable 06:03.600 --> 06:08.280 business out there that can support you in this. 06:08.280 --> 06:14.400 So the planning and decision making was typically done top down by the public entity 06:14.400 --> 06:18.680 spending the development, either through some kind of technical steering committee, with 06:18.680 --> 06:25.560 those involved or through direct communication between the municipality or public entity and 06:25.560 --> 06:26.800 the vendor. 06:26.800 --> 06:33.560 So this could be run in parallel, so they could be like overall coordination happening while 06:33.640 --> 06:40.000 still municipality is going directly to the vendor to fast-track some things. 06:40.000 --> 06:46.960 And in some cases, although then for the internal teams, and this is something to maybe 06:46.960 --> 06:54.840 consider is that by how you include vendors or the service suppliers in your collaborations, 06:54.840 --> 07:01.120 excluding them fully and just doing with the public entity and collaboration, that may 07:01.120 --> 07:07.760 lose insights from the vendor service supplier, which could help you actually in the 07:07.760 --> 07:08.760 development. 07:08.760 --> 07:13.760 And also by fully relying on the vendor or the service supplier in coordinating, that 07:13.760 --> 07:16.880 can lead to soft lockings. 07:16.880 --> 07:19.880 So you kind of lose track of the product. 07:19.880 --> 07:24.400 So it's really finding this balance in how you include the service suppliers and vendors 07:24.400 --> 07:25.840 in the products. 07:25.840 --> 07:30.520 And this becomes then a matter of how you do public procurement, for example, if you're 07:30.520 --> 07:35.000 doing it below the fresh hold limits and you can do direct procurement, or if you're 07:35.000 --> 07:44.600 frame, frame agreements as well, so that needs to be considered in context as well. 07:44.600 --> 07:49.800 And there was also an interesting note in the interviews that was a large preference for 07:49.800 --> 07:55.200 local service suppliers and vendors to have some kind of closer collaboration and relationship 07:55.200 --> 07:57.200 with them. 07:57.200 --> 08:02.400 And then in terms of communication, all the products have some kind of formal communication, 08:02.400 --> 08:11.120 but a lot of the communications was happily closed between inside the organization, like 08:11.120 --> 08:15.720 within the vendor or the public institution doing the development, but also directly 08:15.720 --> 08:18.520 between the public entities and the vendors. 08:18.520 --> 08:26.520 So this is also like a risk creating these clicks or isolated communication, really losing 08:26.520 --> 08:32.960 a lot of the benefits with the openness and transparency of open source, really creating 08:32.960 --> 08:37.640 a big barrier for others to come in and start collaborating and see what's done and so 08:37.640 --> 08:38.640 on. 08:38.640 --> 08:44.280 So this is also something to think about how communication is done. 08:44.280 --> 08:51.240 Community engagement, the community were very user oriented, but we can still talk about 08:51.240 --> 08:56.480 some kinds of contributions in terms of funding, sustaining that development, of course. 08:56.480 --> 09:01.560 Providing subject matter expertise to their requirements in generic process, but also in 09:01.560 --> 09:09.480 terms of the general shaping and knowledge sharing and identifying a bugs and so on. 09:09.480 --> 09:14.600 So not not much about like the more technical code contributions here, so more about the 09:14.600 --> 09:18.880 higher level in sustaining the projects. 09:18.880 --> 09:29.520 The user basis, so often quite limited, is typically public sector entities, but there's 09:29.520 --> 09:35.720 somewhat higher user communities, so not these developer communities as we find in the 09:35.720 --> 09:43.400 wild, basically or mostly, but the number of end users are much, much greater. 09:43.400 --> 09:48.880 So depending on how we draw, the borders of the user community, it will be much, much greater 09:48.880 --> 09:54.240 because these projects that we look at are really core in different kinds of digital 09:54.240 --> 10:00.680 public infrastructure or public services, so they are still of great importance. 10:00.680 --> 10:04.720 In terms of sustainability, we have touched upon it, but in the central model, there's 10:04.720 --> 10:12.800 a lot of reliance on this core entity, like the land survey in Finland, for example, if 10:12.840 --> 10:20.040 they were to pivot, or if any other case, then a lot of other ministries or agencies relying 10:20.040 --> 10:27.800 on this project would have to reconsider, and if you're in the heavily invested, it can 10:27.800 --> 10:33.560 be costly, so it's important that open source projects in general to think about the robustness 10:33.560 --> 10:40.400 and the bus factor or whatever we call it, how development they concentrate and what you're 10:40.400 --> 10:43.560 doing to address this. 10:43.560 --> 10:48.720 On the other way around in a more decentralized sponsorship model where you have a lot of different 10:48.720 --> 10:55.160 public entities collaborating, co-funding, co-pooling money, you often need to grow up until 10:55.160 --> 11:01.400 a certain level, a number of municipalities, for example, for it to help sustain the development 11:01.400 --> 11:02.400 and so on. 11:02.400 --> 11:08.040 Otherwise, you need some a certain few larger ones that we've more capability to fund 11:08.080 --> 11:13.160 the development, but that's typically not sustainable in the long term, because again, 11:13.160 --> 11:20.360 it comes out of reliance on someone, be it like the capital city in the country, they 11:20.360 --> 11:27.360 want to move on, so there needs to be a sustainable funding model for public sector collaboration 11:27.360 --> 11:28.360 as well. 11:28.360 --> 11:32.880 I talked in the funding dev room this morning, and we talked more about these community 11:32.880 --> 11:37.160 rooms, but it's also an issue here. 11:37.160 --> 11:44.520 So some further recommendations, really you need to consider growing an open collaboration 11:44.520 --> 11:51.560 involving enabling more, more public entities to come in and help co-fund the development, 11:51.560 --> 11:58.760 grow capabilities, consider these suppliers, business models that they are profitable, enabling 11:58.760 --> 12:04.880 that you don't end up in a lock in having transparent continuous check-ins on code and so on 12:04.880 --> 12:11.880 to, and also consider involving the vendors and the suppliers. 12:11.880 --> 12:12.880 Okay, that was a... 12:12.880 --> 12:19.880 Thank you.