UN CEB DTN Open Source CoP Retreat

17 May, 2024

From May 14th to 16th of 2024, the United Nations (UN) Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) Digital Transformation Network (DTN) Open Source Community of Practice (OSSCoP) convened a three-day in-person retreat at the UN Information and Communications Technology Facility (UNICTF) in Valencia. The primary objective of this gathering was to foster collaboration and advance the development and implementation of open source initiatives across the UN system. The retreat brought together 11 representatives from various UN organizations and featured external speakers who provided valuable insights and recommendations. This report summarizes the discussions and outcomes of the retreat, focusing on five key areas: Common Policy Framework, Open Source License for UN, Software Catalogue, Capacity Building, and Code Hosting Platform.

The retreat was attended by the following UN representatives and external speakers:

UN Representatives

• Alessio D'Amico (UNICC)
• Bryan Cahill (World Bank)
• David Manset (ITU)
• Juan Francisco Lopez (UNICEF)
• Massimiliano Falcinelli (UNICC)
• Mustafa Elkrody (UNFPA)
• Omar Mohsine (UNOICT)
• Paul Maina (UNEP)
• Ricardo Miron (DPGA and UNDP)
• Rina Ahmed (IAEA)
• Serve Stinkwich (UNU)
• Yours truly (UNICEF)

Samuel Mbuthia, Cassie Jiun Seo (WHO) tuned in virtually for the Open Source License discussion.

External Speakers

• Axel Naumann (European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN)
• Fiona Krakenbürger (Sovereign Tech Fund)
• Leonard Kuglar (Zentrum Digitale Souveränität)
• Roberto Di Cosmo (Software Heritage)

Day 1: External Insights and Recommendations

The first day of the retreat featured presentations from external experts who shared their experiences and provided recommendations on how the UN could enhance its open source practices. The key takeaways from these presentations included:

1. Code hosting platforms bring complexity. There is a need for a platform that is open to pull/merge requests from UN employees and read-only for external entities. A separate platform may be required for specific agencies and projects that want to engage and receive contributions from external members. This approach aims to mitigate the risks associated with harmful content, repository creation, and spam that the UN might be vulnerable to.
2. Adhering to existing licenses is recommended, as changing licenses and maintaining a compatibility matrix adds extra complexity and legal challenges.

Day 2 Key Takeaways

Common Policy Framework (lead by ITU)

Objective: To establish a foundational policy that guides the implementation of open source practices across the UN system.

The Common Policy Framework serves as the foundational pillar among the five key recommendations, as it sets the stage for the successful implementation of open source practices across the UN system. The policy framework will address essential aspects such as license recommendations, risk analysis, and mitigation strategies, and will provide guidance for UN entities navigating the open source landscape. A concise and clear policy is required, which will also include UN-backed standards like the Digital Public Goods (DPG) standard in the recommendation section of the policy.

Open Source License for UN (lead by IAEA)

Objective: To streamline the licensing process by recommending a limited set of licenses and collaborating with legal teams to ensure compatibility and suitability for UN projects.

• Agreement on recommending up to three licenses (e.g., Apache 2.0, MIT, MPL) to the legal team and obtaining approval for the selected licenses before incorporation into the policy (which will go for final approval from DTN).
• Consideration of custom UN licenses only if absolutely necessary and no existing licenses are suitable.
• Collaboration between WHO Open Source Legal consultant and World Bank Legal team.

Day 3 Key Takeaways

Software Catalogue (lead by UNFPA)

Objective: To create a centralized and standardized catalogue of UN open source software projects, facilitating discoverability, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

• Use of https://yml.publiccode.tools/ to ensure an open standard and flexibility.
• Draw inspiration from the registry of Digital Public Goods (DPG) and the Global Goods Guidebook.
• Work with UNICC to secure server space for hosting the catalogue.
• Establish a request workflow for listing solutions in the catalogue.

Code Hosting Platform (lead by UNICC)

Objective: To establish a secure and scalable code hosting platform that enables collaboration among UN entities while managing access and mitigating risks associated with external contributions.

• Address complexities such as Contributor License Agreement (CLA) signing and user verification.
• Implement role-based access management.
• Grant external (non-UN) members read-only access or the ability to open merge requests if verified. External members should never have "create a repo" access.
• Arrange a meeting with GitLab to discuss on-premises hosting of GitLab Enterprise.
• Conduct a budget/cost analysis of hosting (Operational Expenditure, Capital Expenditure) for the initial setup and ongoing maintenance of the platform.
• Engage with the European Union (EU) to discuss their rationale for choosing GitLab.

Capacity Building (lead by UNOICT)

Objective: To foster a culture of open source collaboration within the UN.

• Develop branding and identity.
• Create a landing page that promotes initiatives, communications, and events.
• Utilize social media for outreach and engagement.
• Organize quarterly UN-wide calls (Mind the Gap) and conferences (external hackathons with conferences and Open Source Program Offices for Good, OSPOs4Good).
• Leverage existing resources such as the UNICEF Inventory and training materials from ITU.
• Emphasize regular updates and community engagement.
• Utilize existing resources from the Linux Academy.
• Organize a hackathon (OSS4SDGs) under the OSSCoP banner. The Open Source Software for SDG is a joint initiative of UNOICT and the European Commission - Directorate-General for Informatics, consisting of a series of innovation challenges aimed at improving and contributing to open source projects that have an impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• UNICEF to provide a challenge for the next SDG 3 challenge for OSS4SDGs.
• Create a Microsoft Teams group for the OSSCoP where anyone from the UN can join.

Additional outcomes of the retreat, and my personal involvement

A priority, parallel to each of the recommendations, will be to draft an OSSCoP charter, which should include:

• Objective, mission, and vision.
• Relevance of open source in the UN.
• Principles of open source development. I will be working on this with UNOICT (Omar) and ITU (David) and present to the overall group. It fits my interest well as I am also volunteering work in the policy and license group.

Apart from this, another exciting involvement for me is working with the UNU (Serge) to explore research opportunity related to Open Source. As of now, I have a few things in mind

• Value of Open Source in developing countries
• Impact of Open Source on various SDGs (how they help attain each)
• Challenges and sustainability opportunities
• General understanding our landscape.

Please let me know if you have suggestions, recommendations, feedback :) you know where to reach me.