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?
I think any software the government funds the creation and maintenance of should be open source, but not all software government workers use should have to be. Lots of niche applications out there that wouldn’t be worth the cost to rewrite or retrain a handful of users.
Yup. It also allows strictly public funding. There are specific use cases where Excel cannot be beaten by say Libre Office Calc. but only a tiny / miniscule proportion of use would ever even get close to that. In which case, we would probably already have some specific software for out BI
Yes. If it is built using public money, it belongs to the public.
all software should be open source 😏
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.
Even top secret should be published automatically within the lifetime of the staff involved. If we decide that we need powerful people acting in secret, they should do so knowing that the public with scrutinize their choices 5 to 20 years later.
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?
Well, off the top of my head, while it would be nice to live in a world without espionage that’s not this one. I don’t think you could do very good spying if everyone knew who your spies were.
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.
In the US, officially, material cannot be classified to save face or because it would make the government look bad (I’m sure this has happened, even if it’s something like: if it makes (official) look bad that will undermine our country’s strength and therefore cause serious damage to national security or whatever).
Secret material is defined as information that could cause serious damage and Top Secret is exceptionally grave damage. And I suspect a lot of classified information does need to be kept classified, either to protect sources or plans of actions or enemy intelligence or even friendly capabilities.
Absolutely!
France and Canada: policies encouraging the use of free and open source software in public agencies.
So, we wrote a petition to the Canadian government asking for endorsement of the fediverse a while ago, and crossed the threshold for a response.
It was pretty clear they didn’t understand what we were talking about, and thought it was just some proprietary startup. Also, they use fax for things, and can’t make an app to save their lives.
Classic: modern policies, prehistoric execution.
All software should be open source.
All software should be open source.
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
I think all government software should be GPLed. Of the binaries or interfaces don’t face the public then the code doesn’t need to be shared, but otherwise: public funded should mean it’s a publicly accessible good.
United Kingdom: several open source government projects and systems published on GitHub.
1.7k repositories is a bit more than several
Hell yeah!!!
As much as possible, yes
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?
microsoft is extremely replaceable by libreoffice.
You do understand that was one of many very relatable examples?
absolutely. that’s why i think in the long run, we will see more of libreoffice and less of ms office. there’s always the possibility of microsoft shenanigans, though.
public dealings should naturally have good reason to be closed or rely on private services outside democratic oversight. any citizen should be able to figure out how the public machine works and that includes the computers, whenever applicable. i can conceive of the exceptions of course.
I think you underestimate what office is now and how it is used
on most workplaces i’ve been in, it’s a run of the mill office suite, with occasional duct tape database action.
for these migrating to libreoffice will just replace the quirks, except its not in the hands of microsoft anymore.
there is certainly more uses of course, but these gets ever more niche.
That may be true, but in larger org, things like auditable documents are critical, and believe it or not sharepoint can handle this. Outlook is used in complex ways. Powerautomate flows do a ton, and they may sound goofy at first, but having them sit in the middle of all of the orgs office tools (including email, chat, doc management, etc) makes them actually powerful.
I thought I’d be the last person singing the praises of M$ office, but it really does do a great job in a large org catering to a WIDE range of users and abilities.
But yes, a small business can just use libreoffice for word processing and budgeting. That part is free, but then depending on the needs of the org you still have to handle things like email, document sharing, permissions, etc.
and my point is there are foss alternatives to every software you mention, with it’s own complexity and workflow.
you seem convinced they are worse or not as powerful, when they are just different with their own quirks. even if they weren’t, the loss of productivity is worth not relying on us software in the long run, and making our own.
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)
The lack of understanding around open source is alarming. Open Source licenses only require someone to share the source with anyone who gets a copy of the binary. So top secret military software can still be open source because if the DoD doesn’t share the binary, they don’t have to share the code either. But forcing it to be open source ensures that if that software is ever declassified and distributed to 3rd parties, those third parties will have a legal right to the source.
Closed-source code from a hostile foreign power should not be in government computers.
Though even China allows Windows for government contractors. I guess either way the drivers will contain proprietary blobs.
