OFA Symposium 2025: Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times

Nicholas (Nick‘) Gates is a Senior Policy Advisor at OpenForum Europe (OFE), where he works on research and advocacy related to open source software and other open technologies. Nick leads the organisation’s research efforts, including the OpenForum Academy (OFA) Symposium, its annual research conference. He also leads OFE’s advocacy work on the NGI Commons and European Open Source Academy initiatives, which are focused on digital commons and public recognition of open source in Europe.

Nick’s expertise is in open source in the public sector, open source for social good, and the funding and sustainability of the open source ecosystem. His background is in digital government policy and research, particularly on open source but also public financial management, and digital service delivery. He enjoys supporting development partners, governments, and international organisations to deliver on their agendas through applied policymaking and research.

Before joining OFE, Nick helped launch ODI Global’s Digital Public Finance Hub, a new learning initiative around the digital transformation of public finance, as a consultant at Public Digital. He began his career working on research, policy, and advocacy at the Digital Impact Alliance — conducting research on topics including national digital transformation processes, open source in government, and digital transformation policy — and was a Fellow at the Portulans Institute.

Nick holds an undergraduate dual degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Political Science and History, and graduated with an MSc in Global Development from the University of Copenhagen in 2018.

Cassie Jiun Seo is a public-interest technology specialist focused on the sustainable use of technology in humanitarian, development, and migration nexus. She consults the World Health Organization on free and open-source solutions for epidemic preparedness, personal health records, and global interoperability of health credentials. Previously, she led the digital unit at the Norwegian Refugee Council, supporting large-scale humanitarian and emergency operations. She is an affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University, where she researches technology practices in humanitarian contexts.

Jennifer is an independent legal consultant and PhD Candidate (International Law x Computer Science) at the University of Cambridge as a World Ramsay Scholar. She researches global governance of open-source software. An experienced Australian public international lawyer, she has advised on a broad range of matters at the intersection of technology, human rights and policy, including for public and private sectors. She has worked as Senior Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, for leading international law firms and served on the International Law Association’s Global Board. Jennifer holds a LLM and BA/LLB (Hons.).

Jan Krewer is a doctoral student at the Centre of Economics of the Sorbonne Paris North University. Jan’s research is financed by the National Association for Research in Technology (ANRT) under an Industrial Agreement for Research Training with the French development agency – the “Agence française de Développement” (AFD) Group. His work contributes to AFD’s multidisciplinary research department on commons and sustainable development.

Jan holds a master’s degree in international public management from Sciences Po Paris, where he studied political sciences. He previously served as an analyst and Deputy Secretary-General of the French Digital Council, contributing to the initial development of the Law for a Digital Republic. Jan lived in Senegal and Rwanda, where he joined the Smart Africa Alliance as a strategic advisor to work on pan-African data governance and the federation of digital identities. Most recently, he worked as a Senior Policy Analyst at Open Future, helping to develop a European strategic agenda for digital commons as part of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Commons project. Jan Krewer’s research focuses on forms of collective ownership of technologies and their potential for the development of societies.

Senior researcher at CISL and principal investigator. Ph.D. from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Expert in FOSS and Digital commons.
CSIL's other participants in the research team are: Prof. Massimo Florio, D.sa Silvia Vignetti and D.sa. Martina Gazzo

Legal Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS, working on legal strategies for open data and data commons.

Raphaël is a political analyst and public innovation expert with 20+ years of experience across more than 20 countries. He leads ECDPM’s work on Brazil’s digital public infrastructure and has co-authored recent reports on tech sovereignty and open-source governance. He is also currently working on a broad mapping of national and regional DPIs in the East Africa Community. A fluent Portuguese speaker and 2024 graduate of the AI4GOV Master’s in Artificial Intelligence for Public Services, he also lectures at Sciences Po Paris on “Open Government and Democratic Innovations in the Age of AI.” Raphaël was France’s national lead with Democratic Society for climate policy design under the NetZeroCities action framework. He is also the co-founder of Plurall.cc (Paris-Kigali) a consultancy collective that helps turn policy challenges into opportunities for sustainable, community-driven digital infrastructures. He is a 2025 Fellow at ITS RIO (Institute for Technology and Society).