I’m currently overseeing a working group for the association “Open Source Sweden” to form form a sensible opinion on the topic of:
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“How public authorities work with, procure and finance cloud services”.
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This topic is complicated and I need you help.
Identify more “key aspects/subtopics” that should form up a sensible opinion.
Provide your opinion on already identified subtopics which are as of today:
A: Use of tax money (should be primarily reinvested in software that goes back to the public).
B: Digital sovereignty - a nation must consider the fundamental impacts of being dependent to global corporations and/or other nations when providing services to its citiens.
C: Legal (Swedish/EU) aspects of using public clouds.
D: Long term access to competency - How is knowledge of building software and digital infrastructure systems affected by using public cloud services?
E: Social aspects - what is at stake when authorities use public clouds and social consequences?
F: How is local (national) business and corporations impacted by national strategies on procurement of public cloud services?
I will consider all inputs in the work we do in this domain to bring that into the network of experts I work with here and I will update here on all progress.
The way to help, could be that you pick out a topic from the above and expand your own thoughts in this thread or add a new subtopic and form up your argument why this is a new key element we need to add.
This is really not my area of expertise but I think we have some people registered on the platform. How about @Jiffit and @IsadoraH at Internetstiftelsen? Or @mattias who used to work for Digidemlab?
Hello @erik_lonroth, I am interested in D, but am not sure why you formulate it in terms of “public cloud”. I would argue that procurement should always have the goal of fostering the development of skills in the community for which the procurement is done.
This is a strong argument in favor of pushing for FLOSS, public cloud or not. years ago, a friend of mine spearheaded the open sourcing of the City of Bologna’s IT. It was not about “the cloud”, it was about employees with desktop computers running Windows 98 + Outlook + Office. It comes down to this: either you keep buying licenses from Microsoft, or you give the same money to some local person who can install and maintain Linux + Thunderbird + Libre Office. The second option clearly builds more competence in the office and in the city.
On top of that, the procurement office has to learn to procure IT services. Which is not an easy job – I myself got burned when procuring software, because I did not understand how software is made. I had to learn to become a better buyer. So, going FLOSS rather than buying proprietary has skills development advantages both in IT and in procurement itself.
Regarding E, some cloud suites offer genuine value (lie Google) but gather tons of data about the users. Shouldn’t a democratic government be concerned about a private entity compiling and then selling ads off of such deep surveillance? I imagine that Google does not distinguish a government or non-government user and I also imagine they derive great benefit from people not logging off when they go surf the net in their own time.
I don’t know what Adobe does with the data they gather. But switching all their products to the cloud for everything was not a welcome move, to me at least.
Hi @erik_lonroth I added some answers here. Hope it can be interesting and useful.
To zoom out and add a key aspect I want to encourage engaging on a systemic level in the procurement process. As any procurement is relevant to Open Source Sweden and its members they would gain from contributing to opening up the procurement system in Sweden. It is currently one of the most proprietary and closed processes in Europe. I did a webinar at work which you can find here about how the current closed private monopoly enables fraud and can foster corruption worse than other European countries. Sweden does not have a central open public database for procurement processes and the private monopoly was just sold. The current situation stifles competition and effective use of tax money. You can contact the Open Up! project by Open Knowledge Sweden and DIGG to support this systemic shift which in turn can support the uptake of procuring open source solutions and public cloud services respecting citizen rights without e.g. Google Analytics.
A: If a public cloud service respects citizen rights and complies with e.g. GDPR and Schrems and is more efficient hardware wise than an on-premise solutions it can be better use of tax money.
B: I believe that the public cloud services in Sweden should be hosted in Sweden especially considering the capacity and competency but also service providers which respects and encourages digital rights.
C. From what I read so far there hasn’t really been anyone daring to say what’s OK and what’s not and a lot of public sector bodies are using public cloud services and it’s user services which really can be questioned legally.
D: As @alberto wrote I believe choosing FLOSS can enable and encourage long-term fostering, learning and development of local skills in comparison to voluntarily braindraining one’s own community/municipality/region/nation.
E: Economy, trust and engagement in the current shape of representative democracy. I believe that the time up until now has decreased all three of these aspects, at least with Swedish Transport Agency scandal.
F: I think it’s gain or drain kind of scenario. My analysis right now of the Swedish situation is that we’re only scratching of the surface of our digital potential partly due to the systemic issue (see 1.) regarding procurement. It’s also important to teach the procurers and people working in public sector regarding the pros and cons about home built on-premise solution and public cloud which is something my colleagues wrote a white paper about here as some might view public cloud as dangerous and see homegrown solutions as gratis when they in reality can cost a lot more of employees’ and consultants’ time and work.
The update I have here, is that a draft document has been created with all the input from this thread taken into account. The document will finally be adopted by the members of Open Source Sweden - then forming a baseline on how “cloud” and “open source” works together. It will not be perfect, but it will be something.
That text will reach the public in early 2021, where the ambition is to drive Swedish legislation in favor of open source on a national level.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Thank again! If you have more input, its not to late to bring it forward and I’ll push it onwards.
@erik_lonroth Nice! I also saw that you’re part of the latest report on public procurement with HIS.se. Would be great to do some marketing about it if you’re up for that.
Hosting and providing a secure, privacy oriented and tech savvy platform (nextcloud) for a community such as edgeyriders is a project worthy of attention for sure.
But, yeah, it cones with some commitment.
I would love to discuss it.
Den tis 28 sep. 2021 12:26Alberto Cottica via Edgeryders <contact@edgeryders.eu> skrev:
@alberto@nadia@mattias@hugi@teirdes I would like to invite you to an open source event on the 21st january, organized by open source sweden.
The subject is “Moln i offentlig sektor” (cloud in public sector".
It follows a report that will be released on the 18th from DSAM (also covering the SOU 2021:1) and most major Swedish authorities will be presenting. A majority of the Swedish budget will in fact be there. They serve as good examples.
Not only that, the person behind Öppna skolplattformen (who got sued by Stockholm stad for providing a popular open source app to parents) will also present. They will be telling the story about perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of Swedens relation to procurement of software solutions for the benefit of the public.
I think this is an event that provide strong signals of fundamental change in the positive direction we have worked so hard towards for decades.
I will try publish the link with more details here once we have produced the material needed and prepared the platform. The event will pe public on the 18th,but I wanted to invite you all to join personally.
I think this is one of the best reports that has been generated in Sweden and tells s good story, leading by example.
The results shows that its not needed to dismantle fundamental rights to achieve great solutions and be cost efficient. Open source solves these problems.
Closed solutions does not, because they fail to meet high standards. Thats why sou 2021:1 is so bad. It suggest we fuck up our constitution to make way for insecure, bad, closed source solutions offered by ad-tech (Microsoft/Google are some others).
The 21st I’m hosting a conference with open source sweden where you can meet the persons behind all this. You should all join.
