Why should government digital transformation be open? How does open source software help power this? What are cities doing to ensure that digitally implemented policies are democratic, transparent, and just? These questions will be discussed in this interactive discussion with Ben Cerveny (President & co-founder, Foundation for Public Code) and Ger Baron (Chief Technology Officer, City of Amsterdam). The session explores the potential of public code in revolutionizing digital government, and why collaboration and openness are key in this process. Public code is both, computer source code (software & algorithms), and public policy executed in a public context, by humans or machines. It is explicitly distinct from regular software because it operates under fundamentally different circumstances and expectations. Ger & Ben will discuss innovative examples from Amsterdam’s digital agenda, and how the Foundation for Public Code helps public organizations collectively develop and maintain software. Laura Scheske is the session facilitator.
This high-level, visionary discussion of the importance of open digital transformation in cities is turned into action in the day-to-day work of the Foundation for Public Code with the City of Amsterdam. We will engage with more cities on realizing public code projects, help them to collaborate in the open, and continue to build the global public code ecosystem. Questions and insights gathered in this session can feed directly into our work, and help us build this network.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:The moderator will prepare questions for the speakers ahead of time, while also taking questions from the audience - if there are more participants, more participant questions will be asked, and vice-versa.
Foundation for Public Code
CTO, City of Amsterdam
President & co-founder, Foundation for Public Code