Jan Ljungberg, Institutionen för Informatik, Handelshögskolan, Göteborgs Universitet: Open source and public sector - discourse and practice

During the last decade Open Source software development has had an enormous impact on areas such as software development and software business models. Now it is also becoming recognized by the public sector in several countries in the western world as well as in developing countries like China and Africa. This is a result of the movement's maturity, quantitative as well as qualitative growth and recognition in media. This can be described as a process of institutionalization that now is reaching the public sector. During the last years the public sector and governmental institutions have discussed and formulated policies regarding software purchase where Open Source has been regarded as an important alternative for several reasons, e.g. economic, ideological, security etc. Several studies and reports have come to support this notion of the strengths and potentials of OSS, especially the opinion that governments, public sector and public administrations could benefit from OSS (see for example, the QinetiQ analysis of the impact of Open Source Software, 2001, the FLOSS study, 2002 and the EC's IDA report “Pooling Open-Source Software”, 2002). Arguments concerning “value for money”, avoidance of “lock-in” situations and aspects regarding citizens’ right to public information, security and permanence of data, were highlighted in the reports. The anti-trust trial against Microsoft has further spurred the discussions on monopolies, vendor lock-ins, unfair competition etc. that have come to draw attention to the Open Source and Free Software movement. Pressure for better citizen service and openness together with increasing IT-costs (e.g. the licensing costs for desktop products), has led to a steadily increased spending of taxpayer money for public organizations. Now municipal and federal government agencies worldwide are looking into the relative benefits of OS in comparison to proprietary software vendors who firmly guard the intellectual property of their source code. Some nations are considering or are already mandating the use of OS in governments which prove that OS has reached a critical mass through lobbying efforts and media attention to set loose international actions within government agencies. Current policies are ranging from mandatory use of OS (e.g. Germany, Taiwan) to more balanced views on procurement of software for public sector (e.g. Denmark, UK). Research on Open Source in public sector is thus relevant for many stakeholders: policymakers on regional and national level, public sector organizations (e.g. administration, schools and health care), vendors (e.g. IBM, HP), and consultants (especially small local software firms).

We will here refer to these current efforts at different levels (e.g. national policy making, local initiatives, commercial actors) of implementing Open Source in public sector organizations and governmental agencies as open sourcing. Open sourcing will then both refer to the actual implementation OS software, as the drawing on OS processes, arguments, ideological values, movements etc. to impact public sector IT-usage by means of Open Source code. This means the process of opening up information systems in particular ways that are compatible with OS ideology, software, licenses and policies. It means that we do not limit the definition to the software itself. It is also important to include processes – economical, organizational, ideological, legal, political, security policies, to name a few – surrounding the actual development.

Open sourcing will look different in different areas of society. We are concentrating on the public sector because of the rapid change in this area regarding interest in and use of Open Source software. The overall goal of open sourcing is increased use of IT in the public sector to a competitive cost. Practical results are in the form of OS installations in several public sector organizations that is widely used. The transition to Open Source in public sector can, for example, also work as a catalyst for local software industry and thus contribute to the innovation system and to regional sustainable growth. But there is a wide range of arguments surrounding the discussions on Open Source in public sector, which will be accounted for.

The purpose of this project is to study how the open source and free software movement influence and construct public policies and practices.

This means to describe and analyze how a social movement affects societal actors by studying how the Open Source movement creates itself and its achievements in terms of ideology, policies and goals, and how this relates to the public sector's understanding of the movement in relation to the public sector's own mission. This is understood differently in different countries or on a European and global level. Open Source is seen as one answer to problems and as an "illustration" to important principles in democratic societies in late modern western world.

This will be achieved by:
1. Follow the process of Open Source becoming institutionalized into different areas of society of which the public sector will be the most important one.
2. Study what practices that are developed within the framework of this institutionalization
3. Study decisions and policies concerning the future use of Open Source software and the principles that guide the Open Source movement are understood and treated by representatives for the public sector that sometimes lead to decisions for using Open Source software based on the principles in the Open Source movement.
4. Study these processes through a comparative study globally as well as on a European and national Swedish level. In previous studies by the research group we have noticed differences in arguments and how arguments are treated. This research project is intended to give a more in-depth understanding of the co-construction of both the Open Source movement and the idea of the public sector.

Välkomna!
Daniel Skog