Minor report from the trenches of free software development, but a project for Danish local authorities I've been heavily involved with the last few years (since 2015, getting up to speed since 2017) made it to the Joinup site:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/aut...
Basically, it's about something as bureaucratic as maintaining authoritative organisation hierarchies, e.g. for local authorities (which the tools was specifically made to support). Ideally, all onboarding etc. of new staff could be done in this tool with integrations in place to allow automatic access to other systems the employees would need. Or, as it says in the article:
"OS2mo keeps tabs on the hierarchical links between units, manages lists of employees, per unit, project and task. It provides a management interface that shows for each unit, department, project team and person who is responsible for what, who else is involved, and which IT systems are being used. The information is easily exchanged with access directories and other IT management systems, helping to create, change and manage roles in an organisation, and manage user rights and access rights. And then, OS2mo can also work as an organisation’s address book, displaying contact details and presence information."
What is also interesting is that as small as this tool is, we also hope it can serve as a door opener for other free software, which has *not* otherwise been a priority for Danish local authorities. In order to run this system, based as it is on PostgreSQL, Flask and Python (and some frontend stuff) the municipalities need to provide a GNU/Linux server, and for many of our customers this has been a first and a struggle with their own IT departments.
I'm sorry if people find this announcement off-topic for this list, but I can't help but be a bit excited to see a project I've been working on for so long getting ready to go out there - and hopefully open more doors for free software in the municipalities, as they see that it works and is much cheaper than the proprietary systems they normally use for these things.
Best regards, Carsten
Hi Carsten,
~ Carsten Agger [2020-01-09 22:07 +0100]:
Minor report from the trenches of free software development, but a project for Danish local authorities I've been heavily involved with the last few years (since 2015, getting up to speed since 2017) made it to the Joinup site:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/aut...
Basically, it's about something as bureaucratic as maintaining authoritative organisation hierarchies, e.g. for local authorities (which the tools was specifically made to support). Ideally, all onboarding etc. of new staff could be done in this tool with integrations in place to allow automatic access to other systems the employees would need. Or, as it says in the article:
Thanks for sharing, and congratulations! I find this very interesting and relevant, as it is another example for ready tools that organisations like administrations can use, study, share, and improve.
In particular, I am happy about the following:
"OS2 already involves 66 of the country’s 98 municipalities, and 35 IT services providers. 'OS2mo could grow to become a standard application, because it delivers a common service that all public organisations in Denmark need,' he says.
According to Mr Thirifays, the software can even be adapted to other countries. 'It can already be used as a standalone tool, helping public services, companies, or NGOs keep their address book and access directory up to date.'"
The fact that it is supported by a wide range of companies and administrations, and the ability to be adapted by other players as well is a good indicator for its re-usability, which is a key asset for Free Software projects.
Best, Max
Hi Max
Thanks for your response! I'd like to clarify a bit to explain the nature of the collaborations in municipal free software development here in DK - it's actually quite interesting:
On 1/10/20 10:20 AM, Max Mehl wrote:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/aut...
Basically, it's about something as bureaucratic as maintaining authoritative organisation hierarchies, e.g. for local authorities (which the tools was specifically made to support). Ideally, all onboarding etc. of new staff could be done in this tool with integrations in place to allow automatic access to other systems the employees would need. Or, as it says in the article:
Thanks for sharing, and congratulations! I find this very interesting and relevant, as it is another example for ready tools that organisations like administrations can use, study, share, and improve.
In particular, I am happy about the following:
"OS2 already involves 66 of the country’s 98 municipalities, and 35 IT services providers. 'OS2mo could grow to become a standard application, because it delivers a common service that all public organisations in Denmark need,' he says.
According to Mr Thirifays, the software can even be adapted to other countries. 'It can already be used as a standalone tool, helping public services, companies, or NGOs keep their address book and access directory up to date.'"
The fact that it is supported by a wide range of companies and administrations, and the ability to be adapted by other players as well is a good indicator for its re-usability, which is a key asset for Free Software projects.
It's important to distinguish between OS2 and our product OS2MO. OS2 is a collaboration between 66 municipalities, as the article states, and the idea is that the municipalities pool together their resources to create software they all need. Since this is always released as free software (normally the MPL, but this varies - some of the projects are under e.g. GPL3), the software is then available for all of them free of charge; of course, with a price tag depending of the TCO of operating it themselves or asking one of the associated vendors to do it.
All OS2 projects have a name that starts with "os2" and is described on this page:
(alas, only in Danish - there is an introduction in English here: https://os2.eu/node/332)
I think the collaboration originated in TING, which is/was a Drupal-bases CMS package with many customizations made and used by a large number of public libraries. Some OS2 products have been developed in-house in the municipalities, others have been procured with external vendors like my own company.
My company has developed and/or worked with a number of these products, e.g.
* OS2datascanner, a web and file system scanner to detect GDPR and other privacy violations (originally the use case was to detect possible leaking of citizen's confidential data to municipal web sites, which increasingly contain vast amounts of data)
* OS2borgerpc, which I presented at FOSDEM in 2014, when it was still called BibOS - a GNU/Linux based OS for public-facing PCs in libraries and municipal offices, with a central admin system to control and update them
* OS2display, a system for controlling info screens in public libraries and other places, also based on GNU/Linux and with central management (but the OS is controlled by os2borgerpc). This product was created by the municipality of Aarhus, but they asked us to take over the governance and development and sales to other municipalities as it's not really their line of work.
* OS2bos, a very new system for appropriation of funds for caseworkers in social services (specifically child protection services). This system just went into production in December!
So all of the 66 municipalities are not involved in OS2MO, but in somewhere between zero and many of these products. I should also add that while this model and idea is really wonderful, there are drawbacks. OS2, the coordinating organization, has very few resources - a coordinator and a few employees to help which are donated by some of the larger municipalities. (Thus, the coordinator is formally employed by the municipality of Aarhus.)
OS2 does not have funds to maintain these systems, so maintenance is paid by the procuring municipalities. And there is a - let's say, spectrum - of willingness to invest; thus, the municipality of Ballerup are completely committed to the concept of "open source" as a rational digitization tool, and they are a /really/ big customer of ours and have also really been reaping the benefits and savings of their investments. A few others are "big players" that help a lot of free software into being. Other participating municipal have a tendency to sit on the fence and wait for others to create the software and then latch onto it when it becomes available. This is compensated by "enrollment plans" for municipalities that want to join the "common track" deployment instead of rolling their own from the source code, which can be demanding for a small organization. But it can be complicated. :-)
And, it is also the OS2 collaboration, and not the specific product, that has 35 associated service providers.
So, OS2MO is currently being deployed to 16 municipalities in Denmark, and as the article states, ideally it can be used to onboarding and offoarding of staff in these organizations, with integrations to directories and other systems to automatically give user access to relevant IT systems (most of which are proprietary in these landscapes). But we do hope more will jump on the bandwagon, and I know of at least one other vendor who's very interested in providing this system. So we're very definitely going in the right direction, and the whole OS2 collaboration is one of the most interesting free software related things to happen in Denmark in the last decade.
Best,
Carsten
On Thursday 9. January 2020 22.07.24 Carsten Agger wrote:
"OS2mo keeps tabs on the hierarchical links between units, manages lists of employees, per unit, project and task. It provides a management interface that shows for each unit, department, project team and person who is responsible for what, who else is involved, and which IT systems are being used. The information is easily exchanged with access directories and other IT management systems, helping to create, change and manage roles in an organisation, and manage user rights and access rights. And then, OS2mo can also work as an organisation’s address book, displaying contact details and presence information."
Sounds like a useful tool. Things like rights management made me immediately think of technologies like LDAP, and I see that Active Directory features in the architecture diagram. Also, with things like payroll system integration (which is also in the diagram), I imagine that such a tool would have applications in quite a few organisations of a certain size.
I am reminded in particular of a similar system at a former employer where the developers presumably face similar challenges (although an apparently exploitative workplace culture around that particular system made me wonder how sustainable that effort actually is). Maybe there are organisations whose needs might be met through broader collaboration around common infrastructure projects such as these, but for some, they would first need to learn how to work nicely with others and to recognise the value of external influences (and probably also appreciate their own employees as well).
What is also interesting is that as small as this tool is, we also hope it can serve as a door opener for other free software, which has *not* otherwise been a priority for Danish local authorities. In order to run this system, based as it is on PostgreSQL, Flask and Python (and some frontend stuff) the municipalities need to provide a GNU/Linux server, and for many of our customers this has been a first and a struggle with their own IT departments.
I guess the Danish public sector is like that in a lot of other European countries: a fixation on Microsoft technologies perpetuated by service providers who pretend that GNU/Linux doesn't exist. Naturally, people are then content to adopt cloud services that do run on GNU/Linux, but maybe only if they are Microsoft-branded. All of this is very lucrative for these vested interests peddling churn-inducing products that need refreshing every season.
I'm sorry if people find this announcement off-topic for this list, but I can't help but be a bit excited to see a project I've been working on for so long getting ready to go out there - and hopefully open more doors for free software in the municipalities, as they see that it works and is much cheaper than the proprietary systems they normally use for these things.
I think this kind of thing is exactly what should be discussed on this list. So thanks for telling us about it!
Paul
P.S. I was also slightly reminded of the Kolab WebAdmin tool which is a simple user manager Web application that edits LDAP attributes, if I remember correctly. That was/is something that should probably have been a separate project with broader applications, maybe intersecting with things discussed above, but broader collaboration has not exactly been a strength of the Kolab project, perversely.