Agenda

Francesca Bria will explore Europe's unique approach to establishing a digital economy based on digital sovereignty, values, and human rights. The speech will delve into the EU's progressive tech regulations, advocating for open-source technology, interoperability and shared governance, data sharing and portability, and privacy standards.

The session will highlight European initiatives demonstrating how open-source technology and equitable technology governance can forge a democratic, inclusive, and sustainable digital society and will conclude with key recommendations to achieve EU digital sovereignty through democratic digitization processes.

This high-level panel with representatives of the leading EU public sector organisations will focus on the diverse paths taken by Member States to reach the ambitious goals of digital sovereignty and twin transition. What are the ways to support open source at the highest policy level? Are there institutional tools to speed up the uptake and reuse of open source solutions? What is the promise of open technologies that has attracted policymakers to place it higher on their agendas?

The concept of Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) has been picked up and implemented at an unprecedented rate among EU public services, showcasing a new need for institutionalised and embedded involvement in open source within the governmental structures. The session will kick off with a presentation of a soon-to-be-published study “OSS capabilities in Public Sector Organisations in the European Union, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland”, diving into state-of-the-art analysis of archetypes, goals, and future of governmental OSPOs. This will be followed by a discussion among the panellists who lead or are in the process of setting up their organisation’s OSPOs about the significance of collaboration among these entities to achieve fully interoperable public services in the EU.

This session will cover the opportunities and challenges of governments taking on various roles in open source. We will compare and contrast the effort of diverse public services that are employing democratic innovation to improve public infrastructure. We will hear about the pooling of efforts on open source between administrations in cities and smaller municipalities. We will also discuss different ways of funding open source development. Representatives of the Sovereign Tech Fund and the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative will share their insights on the subject.

During this session, the finalists of the EU Public Services Open Source Achievement Awards and the winner of the popular vote will present their top projects on stage, telling their story from inception to success, and then discuss lessons learned, challenges they had to overcome as well as tips for others who would like to choose openness for their digital initiatives in the public sector.