Laying the Foundation for the Future: Open Source Sustainability and the Adoption of Digital Public Goods

Task Force 2: Our Common Digital Future: Affordable, Accessible and Inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure. The Challenge Growing interest and investment by governments worldwide in DPGs to meet core government and public service needs is potentially a generational shift in the shape, make-up, and oversight of digital society. Success is contingent on a national and international reassessment of the governance of these DPGs, and to ensure that governments have confidence in their deployment, their direction, and their security. [b] This includes solvable sustainability challenges inherited from the OS ecosystem in which most DPGs are based, and new challenges around the governance of DPGs by governments and sovereign collectives. First, DPGs underpinning identity systems, payment systems, and data-sharing solutions are OS solutions. Examples include MOSIP, Mojaloop, OpenMRS, DHIS2, and OpenCVRS. [1] The Digital Public Goods Standard requires the use of an approved open licence. [2] The ubiquity of OS solutions in today’s technology landscape—some 95 percent of technology is at least in part built on and dependent on OS—underscores the effectiveness of this approach and supports the notion that open solutions are no more inherently risky than proprietary solutions. The majority of OS DPGs start life as small projects, and even major OS DPGs with millions of users often encounter the same sustainability pressures facing other OS projects. These frequently include questions of funding, governance, strategic direction, and non-code skills and contributions. Current models are mixed, with DPGs governed and funded by groups as diverse as governments, cities, philanthropic organisations, businesses, foundations, and end-user collectives. Significant learnings can be drawn from across these actors. However, forthcoming research suggests that even civic technology projects—a useful analogue for the kinds of spaces where nascent DPGs emerge—contribute just 15 percent of the work needed to sustain what they do. [3]