This document summarizes an open government conference presentation about open government initiatives in the US and Canada. It discusses the open government ecosystem involving citizens, advocates, sponsors, academia, industry, and policymakers. It outlines some open government frameworks and initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. It also discusses challenges with open data initiatives and how open source aligns well with open government values and can help open government initiatives succeed.

1. Open Government 2011
Policy,Technology, and Community
in the US & Canada
Presented to the opengov & e-participation
Conference on September 22, 2011 in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Deborah Bryant
Public Sector Communities Manager
Oregon State University Open Source Lab

2. Citizen
Advocates
Civil
Sponsors
Academia
Industry*
Policy
Makers
OpenGov Ecosystem
*entrepreneurs

3. Open Analog
Policy Frameworks Exist for Open Gov at national and local levels

4. Open + Technology
sunlightfoundation.com
est. 2009
est. 2006

5. Motivators to Open
Gov - Gov view
• Growing Public Expectation
• Economic Downturn; citizen empowerment to
self serve (DIY - Do itYourself Movement)
• Political Caché

6. Federal and State
Inspiration

12. Open Data Cities

15. Citizen initiative: A
serious heat-wave
inspired realtime use of
data for public places to
cool off.

18. Burning Question?
call 311
Burning Building?
call 911

19. Open Data Challenges
• Uptake of “donated” applications (apps)
• Concerns by government “data owners”
• do not envision the data as useful if released
• inadequate time to ensure data is updated to meet public
expectations
• unintended consequences (wrong info released in wrong
hands)
• Where data is an existing revenue source for an
agency (provincial issue)

20. Variants: US Open Gov Initiatives
code • democratic process
Open Source Digital Voting Foundation

21. Industry Participation

22. “"There's money to be made out of the billions of data
points, there's also money to be made out of the personal
service points," (a corporate official) said. He confessed he
had no answers as to how to do this.””
May 2010 The Register article entitled “Data Gold Rush in Silicon Valley”

23. D.C. Entrepreneurs

24. Open meets Open

25. Why Open Source & OpenGov
• Shared values
• openness
• transparency
• meritocracy of ideas
• at the core, in the public
interest
• Right tools for the job
• highly available
• affordable
• open standards + open
source = interoperability
Good cultural fit.
• Study shows On-line community
members are more engaged

26. Survey of Open Gov Orgs
40%
40%
20%
Non-Profit
Grass Roots
other
Demographic
(all U.S)

27. Informal Survey of
Open Gov Orgs
Yes No
100%
Use OSS in
operations
75%
25%
Yes No
Have OSS tech
community
members
volunteering
100%
Yes No
Use OSS in
their mission

28. US OpenGov Take-
Aways
• Open Government thrives where citizen
interest is met with public sector support, and
accelerates when open source innovation is
applied.
• The open source community can be (may
already be) an asset to any region.
• Commitments on some level from government
(funding, leadership) must be made for initiatives
to succeed.

29. For Further Information
Deborah Bryant
Public Sector Communities Manager
Oregon State University Open Source Lab
Email: deborah@osuosl.org
Twitter: @debbryant
Skype: bryantdeb
irc: debz0r
Web Site Information:
The Open Source Lab: osuosl.org
The Government Open Source Conference: goscon.org
Professional blog: bryantsblog.com

30. Supplemental Materials

31. OSU
Open Source Lab

33. Open Source Lab (OSL)
• The OSL is a unique facility housed within the Oregon State University
administrative computing facilities.
• The OSL data center provides platform stability and support for many of
the world’s largest community-based Open Source applications
• Host over 140 servers, 40 major projects including Mozilla,Apache,
OpenOffice, OLPC, Linux Foundation, Drupal
• It is a renown global resource, distributing open source software (millions
of downloads a day)
• OSL added its Public Sector program in 2005 and created the
Government Open Source Conference
• www.osuosl.org

34. Open Source Educational Resource for Government
• Education & Discussion for Senior Public Sector
Information Technology Management
• Brings together public and private sectors
• Produced by OSU OSL : www.goscon.org

35. Business Ops
• Custom Software Development
• Staff Augmentation
• Software as a Service
• Technical training
• Workshops and events (including public code sprints
and “barcamps”
• Creative agency engagement including social media/
staff training