Opensource policy needs a ‘Why’

In 2002 Peru had a coherent action plan for open standards and open source. That went way beyond the Dutch action plan of five years later and was probably far ahead of its time. Where the strengths of the Dutch plan lie in focusing on practical operational goals such as interoperability, market forces and strengthening the local economy, the Peruvian plan made no attempts to hide its political mission.

As Peruvian Senator Dr. Edgar Villanueva described in a famous response to a lobbying letter from a proprietary supplier, these are the fundamental IT considerations for any democratic government:

• Free access to public data for citizens
• Digital preservation of data
• Safety of the State and its citizens

The idea is that a democratic government must in the first place be accountable to its citizens concerning its actions. This makes control over, and insight into, the software that implements the law a political issue. Free access to public data and digital preservation are mainly the areas of open standards and it seems that this battle is pretty much won. The importance of open standards is generally accepted in 2010, even by the parties (you know who you are) that have actively blocked its implementation for many years.

Security of the state and its citizens is a lot harder. What security and against which threat? The state must protect itself from unwelcome outside influences. If it can be externally influenced outside the democratic will of its citizens, then there is not much point to democracy. Full access to the source code is a good guarantee of a high level of control and independence. This access means the right to view, modify and redistribute those changes. The government must have, if it wants, its own "gold master" to make critical pieces of software. With a certified, public checksum of the code so that a simple and transparent process exists for verification. This makes the government truly independent of foreign companies or countries that would like to exert influence through undocumented loopholes.

Citizens must be protected from both external and internal robber barons (this is why we have nation-states in the first place!), and against the government itself. Because we know that even democratic governments sometimes just lose their way when it comes to human rights etc. This is why access to source code is also crucial. With an open platform you, the citizen, can protect yourself with heavy encryption on your data(traffic). And that crypto can be checked by someone you trust not to have any back doors. Free software (also known as open source) is therefore just as natural as the use of open standards for any innovative, democratic and sovereign country that deserves the title. For a company this independence and freedom to innovate may also be a strategic matter. And more and more companies are discovering that.

Such a policy is not, as certain parties often state, discrimination against the business model or suppliers. The business model of a software supplier is not relevant to a government. But the term&conditions of product delivery are and those may be set by governments. It is then up to the supplier to decide whether he wants to meet those conditions. Or not. No one is forced to deliver against their will.

The lack of a political mandate in the current Dutch policy is a limiting factor. Without a clear political strategy detailing the ‘why’, IT discussions will always depend on migration plan details and total cost-of-ownership-for-3-years. It may be totally against the zeitgeist to discuss the principles of democracy, national sovereignty and civil rights. But if we do not continually make these points, we might just as well outsource the governing of the Netherlands to Blackwater/Xe and Halliburton.