A no-risk proposition

Open source used to evoke the scrunching of executive eyebrows and a patronizing -"it's still young and risky" comment. Things have surely changed, and the open source "movement" has proven its maturity and is fulfilling its potential.

So why are gov't executives still rolling their eyes and tensing up at the mere mention of "open source." Government is in so many cases the proverbial "late adopter". Well, better late than never. The government development and open source fit is a natural one. The transparency promise (a promise of virtually every government administration) presupposes that software developed in government IT shops is a community resource ... like any other government asset - it is public property.

This is the bottom line of what we are trying to achieve here, with our Sharegov initiative - to align the themes firmly embedded in the philosophy of public service (openness, low cost to the public, objectivity, public participation), with our software development practice. Much overdue. And substantially less risky than permanently committing to some expensive software product only because a charming sales engineer from a big company swept us off our feet during a powerpoint presentation.

We dare to suggest a little formula that will help government developers start sharing more and form a dynamic, energetic community: a little bit of extra, focused effort a couple of times a week! Just like exercise - start with regularity, and maintain discipline - working out will pay off in overall health, stamina, nimbleness... in our case, for our government organizations, for our e-government applications and projects We realize no one will give us the extra time and money to dedicate to kick-off a gov't app development "co-op", so we will give our own time and effort to get things going. We encourage you to do so too - by commenting on our blogs, taking a look at the applications we're making available, by sharing your issues, projects and your own applications. Please don't let inertia and organizational fatigue take over. We're fighting it every day ourselves.

Gov Developers v. Industry Developers

What do our private counterparts in the commercial world have as an advantage that we in government agencies don't? Flexibility, brains, money?

One of the reasons why open source development is so successful, is that self-employed developers or those that work for private, for-profit, organizations, tend to be more prone to sharing, especially if that minimizes the amount of work or maintenance they must perform. Having to deal with steep deadlines, market pressures and competition, perhaps, makes freelance and industry developers more resourceful in adopting and co-opting solutions.


On the other "side" - government is notorious for being slow, and immune to competitive forces, so a common reflex is to be distrusting of community-driven development... our knee-jerk reflex is either to build from scratch ourselves, or to buy something big, ready-made and expensive. What does this result in, in the end - the relative professional isolation of the government software developer.


Gov developers tend to mix less with their peers, their employing organization typically does not force them regularly to refresh their skills. On the contrary, most of the time the government worker needs to beg for training and participation and professional forums, and justify the expense, due to the lack of training and travel budgets. Or, training and learning is usually "silo-"ed -- provided by the companies that the government purchases software from - big names, we all know, that dominate the market, and that naturally favor their own solutions and their methods of development/integration/implementation.

Everyone knows, exposure to diversity contributes greatly to learning and boosts one’s skills. Are open-source technology communities the cure to the gov developer blues, sentenced to isolation and inertia by the bureaucratic environment in which she works?