I’ve been thinking about transparency and security in the public sector. Do you think all government software and platforms should be open source?
Some countries have already made progress in this area:
- Estonia: digital government services with open and auditable APIs.
- United Kingdom: several open source government projects and systems published on GitHub.
- France and Canada: policies encouraging the use of free and open source software in public agencies.
Possible benefits:
- Full transparency: anyone can audit the code, ensuring there is no corruption, hidden flaws, or unauthorized data collection.
- Enhanced security: public reviews help identify vulnerabilities quickly.
- Cost reduction: less dependency on private vendors and lower spending on proprietary licenses.
- Flexibility and innovation: public agencies can adapt systems to their needs without relying on external solutions.
Possible challenges:
- Maintenance and updating of complex systems.
- Protecting sensitive data without compromising citizen privacy.
- Political or bureaucratic resistance to opening the code.
Do you think this could be viable in the governments of your countries? How could we start making this a reality globally?
Software funded by public resources should be a benefit available for the public. Is not only transparency and security, it should be owned by the people who paid for it.
This should apply to everything, not only software. If it’s funded by taxes, it should be freely available to everyone (or provided at cost, depending on the thing in question).
Free public transport!
Scientific research
Sci-hub FTW
Top secret too? I’m sure you don’t mean that.
Okay, I wasn’t aware that I had to tailor my comment to be consumed by extreme pedants. Allow me to revise my statement:
“This should apply to everything that’s created for public consumption, not only software.”
I would have thought that would be implied, but I guess not. Should I explicitly state that it also doesn’t apply to military hardware, or can we just accept that a certain degree of reasonableness must be applied, given this is an internet forum, not a legal document?
How dare you not think of every single edge case and exception and explicitly call it out in an appendix?? I expect better of lemmy
I agree with you. I was giving you a chance to clarify your point so that you don’t seem like a radical if you didn’t want to. Chill - this is just an Internet forum where we share and discuss ideas in order to widen our own thoughts to include those of others. Here on Lemmy we’re more alike than not. This isn’t reddit. Try not to assume the worst from people.
Then you have to word your comments differently, I interpreted it identically to KoboldCoterie.
I’ll work on that.
Why not? Why should we allow our government to keep secrets from us?
Good question. How would that work?
Well, it’s not my area of expertise, so I’m not sure exactly. But I suppose a good place to start might be restricting or removing the ability of government agencies to classify or redact information, alongside increasing the power and scope of FOIA/sunshine laws.
What do you think?
I don’t know. It seems like there are some things that need to be kept close. Trade and peace negotiating. Open prosecution and defense cases. Plans during international conflict.
There’s problematic cases like information on active spies (for example) that would make it hard to remove it entirely, but I agree with you that it could / should be drastically reduced. Obviously this is coming from someone without top secret clearance so I really have no idea how damaging unredacting everything suddenly would be, but there have been many cases where things were redacted or classified purely because it would make the government look bad if it were released, and that, in my opinion, is bullshit. That should be public knowledge.
Absolutely!
Hell yeah!!!
The issue is that most us government software…is actually a contractor. For example, oracle/PeopleSoft is huuuuuge in government. And it will never be open source with that company.
Another huge powerhouse is Acela. Of you do local government, its probably running Acela. Should it be open source, sure! But the software itself is very contractor or SaaS based.
I wish there was more open source for the good of the people, but contractors give excellent scapegoats if something goes wrong. Its not the governments fault the system was down you see, its the contractors fault, go yell at them. If they succeed, great look at all the things we did!
The contractors would merely need to use/develop open source software if they want their cushy government contracts. Seems doable to me.
Some german authorities are chanching to use opendesk which is pretty cool :) Part of the reason is you are not bound to microsoft which is basically a monopoly.
Microsoft is also subject to US government desires
There’s a line to be drawn. For one thing, some stuff has obvious sensitivity that needs to be considered (national security and such). But aside from that… I’m a software developer who works as a contractor for the government. My product is used for and exclusively by the agency I work for, and they paid for it. Its contents would bore people to tears, but aside from that, should it be open sourced when complete? I can’t think of any reason why not.
Now, let’s think about other software the government pays for. Stuff like Microsoft Office and other COTS (commercial off the shelf) products. The government pays for that too, should they be required to make all their source code public in order to have the government as a customer? How do you draw the line in a way that doesn’t leave a loophole for people like me, if I didn’t want my source to be opened?
I agree there are cases where sensitivity matters, like national security or systems tied to critical infrastructure. But when it comes to publicly funded software developed specifically for government use, the default should be open by principle. Exceptions can exist, but they must be justified — not the other way around. With COTS products like Microsoft Office, it’s different because the government is just a customer, not the owner of the development.
With COTS products like Microsoft Office, it’s different because the government is just a customer, not the owner of the development.
That’s the point I’m trying to make though. I’m a contractor, and that’s super common in government because they don’t pay their own a whole lot. The government is my company’s customer. Why can’t we be the owner of the development and that would justify it being closed source? If we can, the same could apply to anyone else and the whole conversation is moot because of a contractor loophole (which you’d have to be careful in closing to avoid closing yourself off to COTS products)
