One of the problems that people keep bringing up is the fact that each department/governemnt body keeps re-inventing the wheel to a certain extent. Why not setup a code sharing site or project hosting site for the development of Government Applications.
As an example of such a project why don't we have a look at plonegov in the states. This is a shared project between multiple Local Government bodies with the stated aim of developing a standard intranet system that can be used across the board.
That's interesting. A couple of questions to delve a bit further. How important, as a driver for re-invention, is an inability to share (and market) code? What are some of the other drivers on the technology side of the equation? What are the business- or governance-side drivers of fragmentation?
I know there is a certain reluctance among some technology executives to seriously discuss open-source owing to a view that contracting support services is more difficult.
There is also a security/risk-management view that source code should be kept secret.
How could a G2G code-sharing site solve for more than one of these issues?
"I know there is a certain reluctance among some technology executives to seriously discuss open-source owing to a view that contracting support services is more difficult."
I'd be interested in seeing why they believe that contracting for support of Open Source projects would be harder than "closed source". To my mind, the fact that the code is open and available widens the support base rather than shrinks it.
"How important, as a driver for re-invention, is an inability to share (and market) code? What are some of the other drivers on the technology side of the equation? What are the business- or governance-side drivers of fragmentation?"
From the discussions I've had, the biggest problem is that people have is that they are unaware of the efforts other people might be making in the same area. A centralised GovForge allows people with similar needs and interests to get together and exchange ideas and knowledge.
"There is also a security/risk-management view that source code should be kept secret."
Keeping source code secret is never a genuine security consideration. Good code is a much better deterrent to attacks.
Yeah, a widget market could be part of GovForge. I would love to see the source code of these widgets (those bits that won't breach the copyright of the underlying application) available for improvement.
GovForge could be used for open sourcing the development and maintenance any open standard/vocabulary/ontology required to support Gov 2.0 and Semantic Web.
THis is a good idea James but it has some potential flaws.
The main one is the potential for it to lock in the worst of breed.
I give as example one the well intentioned but seriously misunderstood AGIMO push for MySource Matrix CMS many moons ago. AGIMO was trying to help out smaller agencies by pointing to a well documented solution for an emerging need.
The result was that people like me spent the next few years fending off the suggestion that AGIMO had "mandated" the use of MySource. Very frustrating and got worse as the months and years went on and MySOurce started to become a worst of breed.
So, I fear that the pace of innovation will consipre against the idea of a code library.
However, a one-stop shop for examplars is another thing. That would be a great idea and should, of course not be restricted to just gov stuff. There is an explosion of wonderful web stuff being documented on sites such as feedmyapp and techcrunch
SOmething like that with a sharper focus on things that might be useful for gov would be brilliant
To answer your question, I guess when I envision GovForge, I'm looking at it from an Open Source point of view. Rather than being the canonical "You must use these packages!" type resource, I see it as more of a collaborative "we've got the same itch to scratch" environment.
Once again it comes back to cultural change I think. Along with GovForge the PS needs to start de-siloising (if you know what I mean).
There is, frequently, a ton of code that government creates in house and that different departments/ministries are essentially recreating over and over again. Making a GovForge (or potentially better a GovHub) could provide a lot of savings.
Indeed, here in Canada, I've been advocating for such a thing not only at the federal level but, more importantly, at the local level. There are thousands of small communities with very limited IT budgets that are re-creating (or purchasing) the same software package over and over. Apply a GPL license and having a GovHub would essentially create one large networked IT dept out of the scattered and small local IT departments across Australia.
To be honest, I've been toying with building such a service here. I haven't done much in terms of advocation but I have been exploring various options.
I think it might be useful for us to compare notes on this.
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