Slide deck at KDE Akademy 2019 regarding Developers Italia, the community of public service developers and the new guidelines on the acquisition and reuse of software for public administrations.

1. Developers Italia and the New
Guidelines: Let the Open Source
Revolution Start!
Leonardo Favario
leonardo@teamdigitale.governo.it
@libremente

2. Community
Legal
Framework Catalog

3. We are building the Country’s
“operating system”:
➔ National Resident Population Register (ANPR)
➔ Digital Administration Code (CAD)
➔ Data & Analytics Framework (DAF)
➔ Designers Italia
➔ Developers Italia
➔ Docs Italia
➔ API Ecosystem
➔ Public Digital Identity System (SPID)
➔ Project IO - Digital Citizenship
➔ PagoPA - Digital Payments
The Digital Team:
a startup in the
government
30 senior experts focused on software
architectures, big data, cloud, cybersecurity,
UX/service design and… open source!

4. Community

5. developers.italia.it
Developers Italia
A community of nearly 3000 developers writing 100%
free and open source code to help public
administrations integrate the Italian enabling
platforms: SPID, ANPR, PagoPA, CIE, etc.
Open, transparent and collaborative approach: all the
code is open by design. Anyone can help.
All projects born from the Digital Team are 100% free and
open source and developed in community (e.g., PDND and
IO).

6. developers.italia.it
Developers Italia in numbers
247 open source repositories on GitHub
2915 users subscribed in Slack
35000 messages exchanged last month
800 developers in October ‘17 Hackathon
3877 contributions (bugfix or enhancement)

7. One of the biggest hackathon
ever organized in Europe
● 26 cities
● 800 developers
● 96 pull requests
hack.developers.italia.it

8. A catalog of the enabling platforms.
Platforms
/platforms

9. /platforms

10. /platforms

11. /platforms

12. /platforms

13. API
A selection of public services
exposed via API.
/api

14. github.com/italia
Source Code
➔ read
➔ study
➔ notify
➔ customize
➔ contribute
The public services software.

15. docs.italia.it
Docs Italia
➔ publish
➔ read
➔ organize
➔ find
➔ comment
Technical documentation but also laws
(CAD).

16. A meeting point where we can speak, share
and learn.
Direct support to administrations and among
them.
But also firms, activist, volunteers. The Three
Years Plan is a Country wide project and the
digital Country meets and chats on Forum
Italia.
forum.italia.it
Forum Italia

17. A chat, divided in thematic channels where to
collaborate in real time with other community
members.
On average, more than 600 messages are
exchanged on public channels each week.
developersitalia.slack.com
Slack

18. The new Guidelines

19. The new Guidelines
developers.italia.it
A practical tool, but with legal effect, to
indicate to Administrations how to fulfil the
legal obligation in the most convenient way for
them.
Result of a collaboration between AgID and the
Digital Transformation Team.

20. ➔ to acquire software, it must make a comparative assessment of the
available solutions (development, reuse, third party open source, SaaS,
licensed or a combination);
➔ when deciding to acquire software with a license or to develop a new one it
must motivate the reasons;
➔ must release as open source all new commissioned or developed software.
In brief, a PA:
developers.italia.it

21. Development Phase
1) The PA “A” decides to develop an “Imago”
software from scratch and commissions it
to a developer.
2) The PA acquires the ownership of the
software.
3) The PA appoints the developer to publish
the source code, with an open source
license, during or at the end of the
development, in a code hosting tool.
4) The software is “registered” in the
Developers Italia catalog.
Public
Administration
“A”
Code
Hosting
Developers
Italia
Registration
(semi-automatic)
Commissions
the “Imago”
software
Publish
in open source
Assigns
ownership
Developer

22. Reuse Phase
1) The PA “B” looks for a software on the
catalog and finds “Imago”.
2) The PA downloads the software and
evaluates it technically
3) The PA appoints a developer to customize
it, install it, maintain it and train the PA
personnel.
4) If the software has been customized it must
be published inside the national catalog.
Public
Administration
“B”
Developer
Code
Hosting
Developers
Italia
Search for
a software
Appoints the
customization
Publish as
open source
Downloads
“Imago”
Assigns
ownership
Code
Hosting

23. Catalog

24. The Developers Italia
catalog
In each software card:
➔ features & roadmap
➔ screenshots
➔ forks
➔ maintainers
➔ development activity
/software

25. The Developers Italia
catalog
In each software card:
➔ features & roadmap
➔ screenshots
➔ forks
➔ maintainers
➔ development activity
/software

26. /software

27. publiccode.yml
A metadata format to describe public software, in the
process of international adoption
https://github.com/italia/publiccode.yml
developers.italia.it

28. publiccode-editor.developers.italia.it

29. Open source software promotion
By placing a file publiccode.yml in its repositories, a
developer can propose its open source software in
the Developers Italia catalogue even if it has not yet
been adopted by Public Administrations.
developers.italia.it

30. The reuse catalog as a showcase
The suppliers are indicated in the reuse catalogue, which in
turn refers to the repositories with the code: the quality of
the code and its documentation become a factor of
self-promotion.
developers.italia.it

31. Beyond “just release”...
What about starting the development with an
open-by-design approach?
developers.italia.it

32. Leonardo Favario
• Email: leonardo@teamdigitale.governo.it
• GitHub: @libremente
https://teamdigitale.governo.it
https://developers.italia.it
—
Contatti
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