Summary ICTU Whitepaper Open Source Ecosystem, September 2017

Authors: Steven Gort and Giulietta Marani. Co-author: Bas Kaptijn.

Blockchain, big data, Internet of Things, robotics, virtual reality. The world is changing fast. To help governments gain insight in innovative and technological developments and their impact, ICTU launched the DIStributed Collaborative Information Platform (Discipl)
in April 2017. This is a platform based on collaboration, sharing and re-using information.

Next step: Open Source Ecosystem

Now, the time has come to take the next step: creating an open-source ecosystem around Discipl. In various locations, government organisations are striving to acquire knowledge and experience with the service provision and business operation of the future. In the open-source ecosystem, ICTU aims to help governments innovate cross-governmentally, as one government, using a learn-do-share environment and a network of collective intelligence.

In this ecosystem, government organisations can:
• Jointly explore the (impact of) new developments and controlling technologies;
• Gain multi-sectoral knowledge;
• Prototype together;
• make use of other people's knowledge, prototype or learning experience.

Experimenting environment

The ecosystem decides what will be explored and invests by means of people, funds and/or tools. ICTU provides a (legally) safe experimenting environment and links to the market and knowledge institutions in instances where connections are lacking. Within the ecosystem, the participating parties will jointly develop new methods and technologies (Proof of Concept, knowledge products, training, et cetera) for their government.

The ecosystem provides the knowhow to safeguard the quality of experiments and solutions and to enable focusing on re-use. A managerial Tech Team, involving senior officials and other experts, filters, prioritises, takes final responsibility and warrants the requisite accuracy in the public service provision and the legitimacy of change.

Starting points

For a fully-fledged open source ecosystem to be established, a number of starting points is crucial: system control, Agile, re-use and social scalability. This whitepaper sets out to explain these starting points, the workings of the open-source ecosystem, and what it can mean to government services.

Download the whitepaper Open Source ecosystem, 870 kb.

More information? Website ICTU and Discipl.org.

If you would like further information on this ecosystem or on how you might participate in ICTU sessions about the ecosystem, please send a message to giulietta.marani@ictu.nl.