"governance" entries

OpenStack creates a structure for managing change without a benevolent dictator

Can education and peer review keep a huge open source project on track?

When does a software project grow to the point where one must explicitly think about governance? The term “governance” is stiff and gawky, but doing it well can carry a project through many a storm. Over the past couple years, the crucial OpenStack project has struggled with governance at least as much as with the technical and organizational issues of coordinating inputs from thousands of individuals and many companies.

A major milestone was the creation of the OpenStack Foundation, which I reported on in 2011. This event successfully started the participants’ engagement with the governance question, but it by no means resolved it. This past Monday, I attended some of the Open Cloud Day at O’Reilly’s Open Source convention, and talked to a lot of people working for or alongside the OpenStack Foundation about getting contributors to work together successfully in an open community. Read more…

Four short links: 31 December 2013

Four short links: 31 December 2013

Augmentation, Decentralised Platforms, CC0'd Legalware, and Greenwald Keynote Transcript

  1. Toyota Manufacturing Principles (Joseph Cohen) — Jidoka: Automation with a Human Touch. The idea of jidoka is that humans should work with machines to produce the best possible outcome, leveraging the execution ability of a machine and the judgement of a human. We at O’R Radar have been saying for years that there’s gold in the collaboration between people and machines, about augmenting people and not simply replacing them.
  2. Twisterthe fully decentralized P2P microblogging platform leveraging from the free software implementations of Bitcoin and BitTorrent protocols. Interesting to see BT and BC reused as platforms for app development, though if eventual consistency and threading Heisenbugs gave you headaches then just wait for the world of Bitcoin-meets-BitTorrent….
  3. Free Uncopyrighted NDA and Employment Contracts — CC0’d legalware.
  4. Transcript of Glenn Greenwald’s Speech to CCC — the relationship of privacy to security, and the transparency of governmental positions on that relationship, remain unaddressed. NSA’s actions are being used to establish local governmental control of the Internet, which will destroy the multistakeholder model that has kept net architecture and policy largely separate from the whims of elected officials. The fallout of Snowden’s revelations will shape 2014. Happy New Year.

Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through

I have posted a prepublication draft of my article “Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through,” published by the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

Advances, setbacks, and continuing impediments to government transparency

The good, the bad, and the edgy in open government at Computers, Freedom & Privacy.

Should the patent office open its internal guidelines to the public?

Anyone following policy issues around technological innovation has noticed the power and scope of patents expanding over time. To understand the forces contributing to this, I recommend a thoughtful, readable summary–and highlight the role played by internal documents at the patent office.

European Union starts project about economic effects of open government data

Open source advocate Marco Fioretti has just announced the start of a
study on open data for the European Union, with a focus on economic
benefits for local businesses. Related surveys are also mentioned.

ICANN without restraints: the difficulties of coordinating stakeholders

The U.S. Department of Commerce, which is
ICANN’s publicly accountable overseer, announced the most important
decision affecting ICANN since its founding: the U.S. government will

give up its role as overseer

and make ICANN independent.

Computerization in Nilekani's Imagining India

Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation promises to occupy a central position in discussions about India as well as the world economy this year. Author Nandan Nilekani can speak with quite a bit of authority on computers, having founded and led Infosys, an early success story in modern Indian commerce and a major player in the historic rise of outsourcing. Particularly relevant to this blog are the book’s observations on computers’ role in the economy and society.

Privacy and open government: conversations with EPIC and others about OpenID

A few days ago I proposed a way to

offer more privacy to people visiting government web sites
.
This blog builds on that proposal, which was largely technical, by
examining the policy and organizational issues that swirl around it. My ideas are informed by a discussion I had with Lillie
Coney, Associate Director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The blog is also inspired by two comments on the earlier blog and
brief email I exchanged with one commenter, which intertwine with
Coney’s in intriguing ways.

Open Gov Is a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

At last week’s Personal Democracy Forum I had a conversation with someone working for a city (I won’t say which city), who was tasked with opening up that city’s data. We were talking about the Apps for Democracy contests held recently in Washington D.C., and he explained his feeling about them: “There were some interesting apps in there, but overall they didn’t meet with the mayor’s agenda for the city.”