2025-11-19 –, Main Room
Collaboration on public sector Open Source Software (OSS) projects is steadily increasing along with demands for sovereign and interoperable technology stacks. Still, practice has yet to catch up compared to industry and the broader OSS ecosystem, whose ways of working need to be tailored to manage the many challenges falling on the public sector.
To help accelerate the public sector's use and development of OSS, we investigated six successful cases of public sector OSS projects from different countries and levels of government. In this talk, we will provide insights on how development is commonly concentrated and performed with the use of national and local service providers. We will talk about different funding models, either involving one or a few central actors, or a wider set through different setups of crowd-funding. We will further elaborate on sustainability challenges related to the various ways of working, and potential approaches to addressing these proactively.
Attendees will walk away with concrete and live examples to reference, as well as insights on how their organizations can start to engage and collaborate on new and existing public sector OSS projects.
Context: The adoption of Open Source Software in Public Sector Organizations is on the rise, driven by benefits such as enhanced interoperability and transparency. However, PSOs encounter challenges stemming from limited technical capabilities and regulatory constraints in public procurement.
Objective: This study explores the organizational aspects of development in public sector OSS projects, i.e., projects initiated, developed, and governed by PSOs. We conjecture that the development diverges significantly from the commonly adopted bazaar model, wherein development is carried out collaboratively within a broader community.
Method: A purposefully sampled set of six public sector OSS projects was investigated using mixed-methods and compared with previously reported cases of bazaar OSS projects.
Results: Among the cases, we note that most (80%) of development efforts typically involve a small group of developers (<15) and rely on formalised processes. Developers are commonly procured from national and local service suppliers. Projects are planned top-down by involved PSOs with funding and contributions to development enabled through centralized or decentralized sponsorship. Projects with a centralized sponsorship have one or a few main PSOs funding the major part of the development. Decentralized sponsorship implies multiple PSOs being mutually dependent on each other to pool the necessary resources for the development. All OSS are reported as being of high quality despite limited size and contributions from their communities.
Conclusions: Findings suggest public sector OSS projects deviate from the typical bazaar model, highlighting the need for tailored approaches to address challenges and solutions specific to their context.
Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lund University.