9:30 am
United Nations Open Source
OSPOs for Good 2023
Building & Designing Cooperative Digital Infrastructure · June 21, 2023 · New York
The first OSPOs for Good symposium brought together government, academic, and industry leaders to explore how Open Source Program Offices can extend beyond enterprise settings to address societal challenges and support the Sustainable Development Goals. Hosted at United Nations Headquarters, the action-oriented program featured keynotes, panels, roundtables, workshops, and networking across the open source community.
UN Secretary-General Technology Envoy Amandeep Singh Gill and UN Chief Information Technology Officer Bernardo Mariano Jr. opened the main program. Sessions covered global institutions of open source, government OSPOs, cross-border collaboration, and open source as an enabler for development—with hands-on exercises to design OSPOs for Good. Adler Archer, JD, represented Johns Hopkins University among the symposium organizers.
Agenda · June 21, 2023
10:10 am
Welcome from Organizers
Amandeep Singh Gill (UN Secretary-General Technology Envoy); Bernardo Mariano Jr. (UN CITO); Veronica Gaffey (European Commission DG DIGIT, remote); Jacob Green (OSPO++) & Sachiko Muto (Open Forum Europe / RISE)
11:00 am
Panel 1: Global Institution of Open Source
Moderator: Gijs Hilennius, EC OSPO (remote)
Leslie Hawthorn (Red Hat OSPO); Kristie Whitaker (Alan Turing Institute); Harresh Pillay; Gautham Ravichander (eGov Foundation); Lacina Koné (Smart Africa)
11:45 am
Cooperation Experiment: BlueHats Global
Bastien Guerry (French Inter-Ministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs) & Jacob Green (OSPO++)
12:00 pm
Panel 2: Government OSPOs & Constituent Good
Moderator: Axel Thevenet (remote)
Koos Steenbergen (Netherlands); Shelby Switzer (Digital Services, Baltimore City); Maria Dalhage (Swedish Public Employment Service); Hal Seki (Digital Agency Japan & Code for Japan)
12:30 pm
Roundtable: Envisioning Cooperating OSPOs Across Society
Moderator: Paula Grzegorzewska
Frederik Blachetta, Mithusa Kajendran (UN OICT), Jacob Green, Ana Jimenez Santamaria (Linux Foundation), Gil Yehuda, Ashley Wolf (GitHub), Christine Kim, Adriana Groh (Sovereign Tech Fund Germany), and others
1:00 pm
Lunch & Networking
2:00 pm
Panel 3: Cross-Border Collaboration Nexus — Baltimore Spotlight
Moderator: Jacob Green
Shelby Switzer (Digital Services, Baltimore City); Andrew Wichmann (Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures); Al Barry (AB Associates); Seema Iyer (The Hive USA for UNHCR)
2:30 pm
Panel 4: Open Source — Key Enabler for Sustainable Development Goals
Moderator: Omar Mohsine
Vipul Siddharth (UNICEF); Eleonore Fournier-Tombs (UN University); Lorena Cano (Inter-American Development Bank); Allana Welch (USAID)
3:00 pm
Plenary Interactive Action Sessions — Let's Cooperate
4:00 pm
Wrap-Up & Next Steps
4:30 pm
Social · UN Delegates Lounge
Related programming
Tuesday, June 20: UN tour and OSPO++ / Open Forum
Europe dinner.
Thursday, June 22: OSPO++ academic and community
meeting at Microsoft, 11 Times Square.
The UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies published an OSPOs for Good conference report (PDF) documenting outcomes, challenges, and next steps for cooperative open source infrastructure.
Organizers
UN OSET · UN OICT · OSPO++ · Open Forum Europe · RISE · Johns Hopkins University (Adler Archer, JD)