Open Technology: Transforming Government? Our next event.

Our next event, that was trailed a few weeks ago, will try to determine whether open data and open source are really the holy grails for transformational government that quite a few politicians seem to think they are.

Our intention is to look at the practical, common sense, business logic for government ‘farming out’ application development to the wider community by making available open data.  Will it reduce the vast cost associated with IT in government?  Will it make any strategic difference in the long run?  Are we doing it right?  Who’s doing it better?

We also want to look at how open source platforms should play a greater part in government computing.  Are the current ‘core applications’ just too rigid and proprietary to be broken-up?  Should incremental application development be built on open source as a mandatory requirement?  Should IT development projects be fixed price and budget capped?  Can open source software help? 

What is government’s view?  What about the political parties – how are they stimulating the debate?  Is there money to be made – what’s in this for commercial businesses?  Are there great examples of open data or open source initiatives that have resulted in tangible, practical and measureable improvement? 

Like our inaugural event we intend to live web broadcast our next event free of charge (if we are successful in attracting enough commercial sponsorship).  Like before we’ll also be offering paid places at the the live broadcast.

We’re working towards a date of Thursday April 22nd – and the event will be held in central London at a venue to be confirmed.  We hope to start building the agenda over the next few weeks – so please visit often!  And comment on this post if you really want us to include a speaker or case study.  We’ll do our best.