eGovOS Running Again

Tony Stanco, host of the most recent eGovOS meeting is putting together anyone. I've included the salient information below - but one thing of note is that it's going to be an opportunity for open source vendors to hook up with the government. In other conference news, I've got my plane ticket for CALU - woohoo!

The Center for Open Source in Government [www.eGovOS.org], along with The Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute (CSPRI) of The George Washington University and others, is proud to present their second Open Source in Government conference called "Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU" to be held in Washington, DC, USA, March 17 - 19, 2003.

This conference is designed to discuss best practices, raise awareness and share experiences among policy makers and senior IT officials from the U.S. and Europe. The conference will draw participants from local, national and international organizations from the public, private and academic sectors.

We strongly encourage Open Source companies to submit proposals, since government officials at the last conference were particularly interested in the Open Source companies, Zope and DevIS, because they provided examples of Open Source solutions that the government could buy.

To facilitate the organization of topics and events at the conference, you are invited to submit speaking and demonstration proposals.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Citizen-Centric eGovernment
Open Source XML Solutions
Open Source and Open Standards
Open Source and Enterprise Architecture
State / Local Government using Open Source
The Role of Open Source in Government
Demonstrations of Open Source Projects
Open Source and Security
Open Source and the Critical Information Infrastructure
NIAP/Common Criteria Evaluations and Open Source
Open Source in the Military
Open Source, PKI and Standards-based Authentication
Open Source in Higher Education
Open Source in Health Care and Bioinformatics
Open Source in Training IT Computer Science Students
Business Cases: Open Source Software and Total
Cost of Ownership
Open Source Empowering People with Disabilities
Open Source and Section 508
Open Source Licenses and other Legal Issues

Dates to Remember:

Deadline for speaking proposals: January 10, 2003
Notification of acceptance: January 20, 2003
Final submissions due: January 31, 2003
Conference: March 17-19, 2003

The conference website can be found at http://www.egovos.org.

Comments

Openchallenge

[jki]

We strongly encourage Open Source companies to submit proposals, since government officials at the last conference were particularly interested in the Open Source companies, Zope and DevIS, because they provided examples of Open Source solutions that the government could buy

I have been in direct contact with eGovOS too, but mentioning Openchallenge here as well cannot harm. We are trying to make this work for public authorities as well - the more the merrier :). We have already got some positive feedback:

I congratulate you with the practical and inspiring approach taken by Openchallenge. It is interesting that this scheme both stimulates the release of open source software and is also operated by people within the open source community itself. Perhaps such a "challenge posting" scheme is also of interest for public authorities to promote open source development." -- Erkki Liikanen European Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society

...just contact us to discuss more and get things going :)

In the last conference - Security issues

[kedi]

I attended the last conference, it was fantastic.

In the sesssion "Security of Open Source Software" Mary Ann (Oracle) raised the point, supported by others, that "more eyes" does not mean "more experienced eyes".

She argued that the fact that Open Source has more eyes looking into the source code does not make it more secure since these eyes are not necessarilly experienced in security issues.

This point may seem logical but is not correct. I think if we take the example of Linux, the "experienced eyes" focused on its security are still more than what could be possible in the confines of one single company. Windows may have all the "experienced eyes" employed by Microsoft, but Linux has many more "experienced eyes" who may or may not be working for IBM, HP, RedHat, etc etc, in addition to Hackers at Large.

kedi