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Waving an Open Source Flag in Australian Government
Aimee Maree Forsstrom discusses her journey in advocating for open source software within the Australian government, highlighting the transition from proprietary systems to open source solutions starting in 2008. She emphasizes the need for policy changes that led to the Australian government's 2011 requirement for agencies to consider open source software in procurements and explores the benefits of this shift, including reduced costs and improved collaboration among departments. The document reflects on the cultural shift within IT departments and the increasing adoption of open source software leading to faster development cycles, increased innovation, and better citizen engagement.
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Waving an Open Source Flag in Australian Government
- 1. Waving an OpenSource Flag in Government The Highs, The Lows and Community Code Aimee Maree Forsstrom @aimee_maree
- 2. Who Am Iand Why Am I Here Worked in Information Technology since 2000 Been a Linux user since 1997 Early advocate for Open Source in Australian enterprise and government Contributions to Content Management Systems and Linux administration Dual bachelors degree with honours in IT and programming Post graduate studies in law and licensing Board member of Open Source Industry Australia
- 3. Eight Years Ago Verydifferent scene Most Government Departments were “Microsoft Shops” Linux servers not the norm in government Proprietary Content Management Systems Licensing fees where in abunbance Tenders favoured “Closed Source Systems”
- 4. Lets Start Witha Story
- 5. In 2008 TheBat Phone Rings “We need you to rescue a project”
- 6. Putting Out FiresOn a Navy Ship At War
- 7. In Comes Linux Verydifferent scene Microsoft servers and Microsoft admins “Will it run on MSSQL?” Our new web applications ran on Linux This meant we needed Linux servers But we had no Linux admins? The development team became the admins
- 8. Breaking The OpenSource Myth But people had their “concerns” Security concerns Licensing jargon Support issues Do we need to release all the things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiVnMazRIII
- 9. Building Teams Skill setsrequire new ways of approaching hiring Traditional recruiters did not understand needs New technology with a small pool of people Seek out community groups We went grass roots Who was contributing and what Not just code but documentation Who was willing to learn new skills
- 10. Support Subscriptions Even withsupport subscriptions Always requires hands on the code No more can you throw it to a company to fix But this adds so much value for peoples growth
- 11. You Mean It'sIn The Open? Lawyers could not understand Academics were afraid Lawyers where scared Management was unaware what this meant Academics needed a new model of sharing We needed champions to advocate to people
- 12. Open Source andOpen Standards Teaching people what Open Source means Getting contributions going with patches Creative Commons on documentation Creative Commons on web content
- 13. Where The StoryEnded or Started? This was the first big Linux and Open Source software implementation that was in the public eye Disclaimer: **If this did happen before there was no one talking about it What came out of this was a clear need for federal government level policy change
- 14. Policy Changes Neededto Occur In January 2011, the Australian government released a policy requiring agencies to consider open source software for all software procurements. Applied to all ICT procurement after 1 March 2011. Open Source software policy requires agencies to consider Open Source software in relation to any approach to market to acquire software. Department of Finance Australian Federal Government
- 15. Three Principles ForOpen Source Principle 1: Australian government ICT procurement processes must actively and fairly consider all types of available software. Principle 2: Suppliers must consider all types of available software when dealing with Australian government agencies. Principle 3: Australian government agencies will actively participate in Open Source software communities and contribute back where appropriate.
- 16. This Ushered Ina New Era of Change
- 17. New Ways ofManaging Code Traditional companies are used to purchasing a code base that has yearly (if) update cycles We moved into a moving target Drupal, like all OSS, requires constant updates RHEL, unlike Windows servers utilizes a package management system so again constant updates You need to implement a release cycle based on days, not months or years (in some cases)
- 18. Freedom For Developers Developmentof plugins or addins for proprietary systems like Aptrix would take months We reduced this to two weeks Developers are not the issue Developers want to see what is under the hood Give your developers the source code and they will love you for it
- 19. Reduction of TimeTo Market For marketing it means faster updates For management it means keeping up the pace Where you replace propietary codebases you move from: Four month release cycles Weekly release cycles Daily release cycles
- 20. Return On Investment "Theproprietary solutions require increasing fees, require expensive support or maintenance costs, and often the more advanced or popular features — the ones that really make a business difference — require so much investment of time and were so hard to get people to do that in some cases, it is prohibitively expensive or impossible to get out of once you're in." John Sherriden – Department of Finance 2012
- 21. No Vendor Lock-In OpenSource enables no vendor lock-in Move away from old busines models Open Source code bases can be hosted by anyone and can be supported by a variety of companies Removed the government away from a single point of vendor failure We could seek support from RedHat. We could also seek support from Linux based agencies
- 22. DevOps Allows for fastercultural change Helped break out of silos of Dev and Ops Closer working of internal departments Greater collaboration of internal departments Allowed for the beginings of traditionally siloed departments to share code, knowledge and hardware
- 23. Here Comes TheClouds The cloud lead to great innovation and change Break out of traditional operations requests Put the power into the developers hands Reduce Total Cost of Ownership Started with Amazon opening up a data center in Australia and from the get-go ensuring they meet government standards No need to spend months on vetting documentation when we could have a dev environment in one day
- 24. Consolidation of Resources Thishas lead to consilidation projects Current NSW initiative is the GOVDC This is a Government Data Centre that also has a Government Marketplace All these services are pre vetted and meet procurement initatives and security requirments Various companies involved so you can move between vendors in the DC
- 25. Custom Code ina Propietary World NSW State Library WOSIP 14 systems integrating to create one web portal World class standard Mixed licensing models GPL – CopyLeft Permissive Proprietary
- 26. Slow and SteadyWins The Race Tortise and the Hare Incremental changes Needs for a new development environment This has been made easier with DevOps culture
- 27. Before DevOps Linux onthe desktop was a scary idea How do you convince mangement “File systems and permissions” “Replication of production ennvironment” We started with virtual machines Eight years later…
- 28.
- 29. Breaking Down TheSilos
- 30. Open Data forCitizen Engagement First Gov Hack Day 2009 – Thanks Steve King Started small Growth was inevitable – Thanks Pia Waugh This year was our first Cultural Data Hack ran by the NSW State Libary – Thanks team!
- 31. You Will NotAlways Get to the Goal Post
- 32. But Planting SeedsIs Most Important “We catalyze direction. That means you are the agent that makes something happen, but it’s your role to do this in an indirect way. It’s my job to say, ‘This is the hill we want to take, and here’s why,’ and then let the organization take over from there.” Jim Whitehurst RedHat CEO
- 33. Its a HardJob But Someone Has To Do It Long meetings Lots of lawyers and legal speak Providing the dream of where you're heading Holding hands Happy developers Happy operations Change in management models
- 34. Dont Be Discouraged Allthis leads to greater citizen engagement Reduction in overall operating costs and time to market And more Open Data
Editor's Notes
- #2 The codebase with orhpaned from the soure which meant that we had a lot of GPL violations in the code and the code base was unable to be updated It was Drupal5 and I decided at the time to build it from scratch in Drupal6 and toss out all the orphaned code
- #3 Aimee Maree Forsstrom Worked in Government and Enterprise It Departments since 2000 worked in the areas of Networking and Software Egineering Professional hand holder for Open Source Early Advocate in Open Source
- #5 As all good things do they start with a story...
- #6 In 2008 I was called in to assist the Australian Learning and Teaching Council on a new “web application” project thet needed to take from an outsource shop to internal The name of the code base with Drupal along with that came two Linux Web Servers And the ALTC had never had a Development Department before
- #7 The codebase was orphaned code and there was a lot of GPL violations that could not be easily removed The effort to reconnected the code base was higher then the effort to rebuild So we rebuilt and took two Linux webservers internal
- #8 The ALTC at that time was a 100% Microsoft Shop In the beginning I was asked “Make it run on Windows with MSSQL” My reply “No” You dont know Linux this is fine I will build a team who does And so started the first DevOps Environment in Aus Gov
- #9 I think this Video explains what I was dealing with better then I could Management became nervous People had major concerns This was new Territory and what did it mean that the code base was GPL? Who would support it if Microsoft would not? Where would we get our support to tick our insurance boxes I had to start debunking Myths
- #10 So I had to hire a team Where to go? Well I had been doing this Open Source thing for a while so I went to the Community Started attending local Drupal and Web meet-ups Started my own Learning Drupal meetup Industry Recruiters did not have the talent pool we needed back then Drupal was a rare skill set and Linux Admin was a larger pool but also a smaller subset of the market Plus I needed To get people who knew Drupal and people who knew Linux there was not many but I found some
- #11 Support Subscriptions are something that Governments loved their was a problem they wanted to throw money at a company and wake up tomorrow to have it corrected For our Linux Distros we used RHEL and where able to get support But this is not the case in OSS even if Acquia exsisited at that time they are not a one stop solution Devs always need to be able to fix the solution because each build of a framework is unique
- #12 We had a dual problem because the system was not just an OSS code base and Linux Servers but it was also under a Creative Commons Licensing Regime This was the first of its kind in Australia a complete solution that was out there in the open We needed champions we needed to run focus groups we needed to take people along a journey with us
- #13 So this meant teachin people what open source means what it meant to contribute patches upstream What was creative commons and how it would not mean an Academics life work could be plagerised or claimed by another
- #14 This was the first public Open Source Solution that the Federal Government had ever taken on The project was born out of about five years of research it was meant to shake things up The department ended up getting consumed by a higher level federal department They knew nothing of Linux and Drupal but there was a Champion inside The research never intended to use OSS it was just what the outsource company used It became clear we needed new policies to enforce change at a tender level
- #15 So a group of people and Industry bodies went to work to help the Federal Government (AGIMO) now Department of Finance set on the task of getting policies implemented
- #16 The biggest component of this new procurement policy was the three princples that where built into the policy from the start Note on Policy three
- #18 OSS in traditonal non OSS environments means Release Cycle Change Alot of propietary software locks you into yearly and in the case of Microsoft mutli-year releases this means targets dont move people at first get afraid of moving targets you need to explain to them the benefits and security is a big factor here
- #19 Developers, Developers, Developers – for the Seattlites in the audience Developers where not and are not a blocker Developers want to build cool things Developers want freedom to understand what they are building Developers will love you for this change
- #20 For Marketing you can win them with ROI on Content and Advertising aka beating the traditional press cycle For Management it means a reduction in cost on time to market I have generally seen this trend of months to weeks to days
- #21 Now lets look at the main take away from that last slide Return on Investment Here is a quote from John Sherriden a major pioneer and promoter of the policy change Currently he is Australian Government Chief Technology Officer and Procurement Coordinator in 2012 I belive his title was Australian Government Information Management Office,
- #22 Another key point of why there was such a need was that Government had been burnt and burnt in a way that needed surgery We had Vendor lockin all over the place you wanted something changed it took not only months but thosands of $$ to give you an idea one time a CSS change cost us $25,000 let that sink in for a moment Another thing we had was a single point of failure and to a room of technologists I dont need to explain the issues there
- #23 Flash forward and DevOps culuture is now the norm and this has helped us speed things along greatly in an OSS environment With DevOps we have been able to take the policy into the new era which we are currently facing in Australia and that is allowing our departments to share and collaborate together this was unheard of before Once again ROI Time to Market consolidation of services – Reduction in over all outlay
- #24 The Cloud lead to great innovation and change and Amazon where a large part of that in Australia They where the first cloud providers to come in that meet Government data/security needs we no longer had to vet hosting companies we no longer had to have mountains of Microsoft servers based in gov datacenters (per agency) Reduction in electrity loss of Jobs? We also could not find the people to perform them
- #26 My latest project was WOSIP Word class standatd we had to meet so it involved a lot of systems Exlibris EventBrite SaSS PaSS A lot of propitary You need to play nicely sometimes it cant all be OSS this is sad but still a representation of the times we live in
- #27 Key take aways