Digital public products need sustainable vehicles

Any open software developed by a government or their vendor needs a public product organization—an organization built around a sustainable, strategic, and collaborative model.

Defining the public product organization

A non-profit entity, established as a hub for open collaboration, which can be a cooperative comprised of public organizations. They steward and scale public software in perpetuity, by providing reliable maintenance and responsive development. They can:

Create governance structures

Steer design and specification

Orchestrate development

Respond to bugs and security concerns

Build sustainable financial models to allow for reliable, continuous delivery

Grow and support communities of practice, involving stakeholders and developers from public implementers and an ecosystem of vendors

Generate awareness of the product as an offering to public organizations who are looking to implement such a solution

Six pillars of successful public product organizations

1

Governance

Crucial to sustainable collaborative development is a community-endorsed model for how decisions are made about the core product and its future.

Good governance allows participating public entities to trust that their invested resources and policy commitments in a specific public product will continue to serve their constituents.

2

Community of practice

A dynamic ecosystem of implementers, developers, and stakeholders that sustains a public product needs active tending and orchestration.

A public product organization must provide contexts for communication, scheduling, and knowledge sharing resources to help the community thrive.

3

Codebase stewardship

The beating heart of a dynamic public product is its codebase. A clear process for open technical collaboration through continuous integration enables the entire community to power the engine that moves the product forward.

Codebase stewards should look to the Standard for Public Code for guidance on best practices.

4

Financial model

Perhaps the most common reason public product organizations fail is due to the lack of a sustainable financial model.

Public funding, philanthropic grants, membership dues, vendor certification, and service contracts enable public product organizations to fund their activities and product development.

5

Awareness & communications

As the growth of a public product community distributes the costs and responsibilities of development and maintenance across a larger set of contributors, increasing awareness of the product’s availability, adaptability, and successful deployment is key to the ecosystem’s success.

6

Organizational structure

Public product organizations can take many forms, and will have different vehicles in different jurisdictions, but a well defined organizational structure that spells out the different processes, roles and how they relate to each other is critical for successful long-term collaboration.

Our role

The Foundation for Public Code works with these groups to establish Public Product Organizations, which develop and maintain digital public products so that they are reliable, high-quality, and centered on public purpose.

More broadly, the Foundation supports communities of open practice, providing guidance on governance, codebase stewardship, financial modeling, technical and product steering processes, community growth and broader awareness. We also work with public administrations to understand how to implement and participate in public products, and with development communities on how to connect, grow, and sustain.

Our goal is a healthy ecosystem of stable digital infrastructural organizations with modern product offerings and development practices.

Our goal

A healthy ecosystem of stable digital infrastructural organizations with modern product offerings and development practices.

Examples of public code

DIIA

Groundbreaking mobile application that connects 19 million Ukrainians with more than 120 government services. One of the most modern “e-state” platforms in the world.

The Foundation worked with the Ukrainian DIIA team on the process of replicating the codebase to Estonia, and supported the decision to open the codebase from the very beginning.

Now, we are helping other public administrations understand how to implement and participate in DIIA.

Creator

Ukraine Ministry of Digital Transformation

Primary Replicator

National and State Governments

Who should get involved?

State governments looking to implement e-state mobile platforms

Learn more

Visit

diia.gov.ua

linked text

Notify

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters.

This project is an important one to track, because it has been used widely across public administrations, but not through an ideal process. Instead the codebase has been forked by the downstream users, which diverges the development process and does not capture the benefits of inter-administration collaboration.

The Foundation for Public Code is working with the various implementers to convene a community of practice and determine what collaborative efforts can still be effective.

Creator

UK Government Digital Service

Replicators

Canadian Digital Service, United States Digital Service, etc

Who should get involved?

City, state, and national governments in need of messaging solutions

Join the community of practice

Email us at

join-notify@publiccode.net

linked text

Spacecraft

Spacecraft is working to create an open modular server architecture for creating, orchestrating, and sharing room-scale or multi-room interactive spatial applications.

Use cases for public administrations and institutions include museum exhibition design, library archive visualization and exploration, urban planning simulation, or dynamic environments for theater, dance, and music performance.

A game engine orchestrates screens, projectors, speakers, lighting, and any number of mobile devices into immersive interactive environments.

Initiator

A forming network of public institutions to procure new platforms

Who should get involved?

State and city and public institution spatial experience designers

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text

Public Geospatial Server

One of the primary building blocks of a digitally transformed public service is geospatial data, which enables powerful applications across almost all facets of municipal and state administration.

While there are many applications with extensive functionality that serve this need, the Public Geospatial Server is a baseline open platform which public administrations can use to make embeddable maps for internal and constituent-facing applications, leveraging open geo-databases to create services and information resources.

Initiator

A forming network of city, state, and federal agencies

Who should get involved?

State and city geospatial data producers and users

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text

Email us!

contact@publiccode.net

Connect with us

Foundation for Public Code is a chapter-based network of nonprofit organizations, with the parent organized as an association (vereeniging) of the constituent chapters registered under chamber of commerce (KvK) registration 74996452, and with identification number (RSIN) 860102294.

We're recognized as a public benefit organization (ANBI) by the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. Our first chapter, the Foundation for Public Code North America, is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with identification number (EIN) 92-2324481.

Digital public products need sustainable vehicles

Any open software developed by a government or their vendor needs a public product organization—an organization built around a sustainable, strategic, and collaborative model.

Defining the public product organization

A non-profit entity, established as a hub for open collaboration, which can be a cooperative comprised of public organizations. They steward and scale public software in perpetuity, by providing reliable maintenance and responsive development. They can:

Create governance structures

Steer design and specification

Orchestrate development

Respond to bugs and security concerns

Build sustainable financial models to allow for reliable, continuous delivery

Grow and support communities of practice, involving stakeholders and developers from public implementers and an ecosystem of vendors

Generate awareness of the product as an offering to public organizations who are looking to implement such a solution

Six pillars of successful public product organizations

1

Governance

Crucial to sustainable collaborative development is a community-endorsed model for how decisions are made about the core product and its future.

Good governance allows participating public entities to trust that their invested resources and policy commitments in a specific public product will continue to serve their constituents.

2

Community of practice

A dynamic ecosystem of implementers, developers, and stakeholders that sustains a public product needs active tending and orchestration.

A public product organization must provide contexts for communication, scheduling, and knowledge sharing resources to help the community thrive.

3

Codebase stewardship

The beating heart of a dynamic public product is its codebase. A clear process for open technical collaboration through continuous integration enables the entire community to power the engine that moves the product forward.

Codebase stewards should look to the Standard for Public Code for guidance on best practices.

4

Financial model

Perhaps the most common reason public product organizations fail is due to the lack of a sustainable financial model.

Public funding, philanthropic grants, membership dues, vendor certification, and service contracts enable public product organizations to fund their activities and product development.

5

Awareness & communications

As the growth of a public product community distributes the costs and responsibilities of development and maintenance across a larger set of contributors, increasing awareness of the product’s availability, adaptability, and successful deployment is key to the ecosystem’s success.

6

Organizational structure

Public product organizations can take many forms, and will have different vehicles in different jurisdictions, but a well defined organizational structure that spells out the different processes, roles and how they relate to each other is critical for successful long-term collaboration.

Our role

The Foundation for Public Code works with these groups to establish Public Product Organizations, which develop and maintain digital public products so that they are reliable, high-quality, and centered on public purpose.

More broadly, the Foundation supports communities of open practice, providing guidance on governance, codebase stewardship, financial modeling, technical and product steering processes, community growth and broader awareness. We also work with public administrations to understand how to implement and participate in public products, and with development communities on how to connect, grow, and sustain.

Our goal is a healthy ecosystem of stable digital infrastructural organizations with modern product offerings and development practices.

Our goal

A healthy ecosystem of stable digital infrastructural organizations with modern product offerings and development practices.

Examples of public code

DIIA

Groundbreaking mobile application that connects 19 million Ukrainians with more than 120 government services. One of the most modern “e-state” platforms in the world.

The Foundation worked with the Ukrainian DIIA team on the process of replicating the codebase to Estonia, and supported the decision to open the codebase from the very beginning.

Now, we are helping other public administrations understand how to implement and participate in DIIA.

Creator

Ukraine Ministry of Digital Transformation

Primary Replicator

National and State Governments

Who should get involved?

State governments looking to implement e-state mobile platforms

Learn more

Visit

diia.gov.ua

linked text

Notify

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters.

This project is an important one to track, because it has been used widely across public administrations, but not through an ideal process. Instead the codebase has been forked by the downstream users, which diverges the development process and does not capture the benefits of inter-administration collaboration.

The Foundation for Public Code is working with the various implementers to convene a community of practice and determine what collaborative efforts can still be effective.

Creator

UK Government Digital Service

Replicators

Canadian Digital Service, United States Digital Service, etc

Who should get involved?

City, state, and national governments in need of messaging solutions

Join the community of practice

Email us at

join-notify@publiccode.net

linked text

Spacecraft

Spacecraft is working to create an open modular server architecture for creating, orchestrating, and sharing room-scale or multi-room interactive spatial applications.

Use cases for public administrations and institutions include museum exhibition design, library archive visualization and exploration, urban planning simulation, or dynamic environments for theater, dance, and music performance.

A game engine orchestrates screens, projectors, speakers, lighting, and any number of mobile devices into immersive interactive environments.

Initiator

A forming network of public institutions to procure new platforms

Who should get involved?

State and city and public institution spatial experience designers

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text

Public Geospatial Server

One of the primary building blocks of a digitally transformed public service is geospatial data, which enables powerful applications across almost all facets of municipal and state administration.

While there are many applications with extensive functionality that serve this need, the Public Geospatial Server is a baseline open platform which public administrations can use to make embeddable maps for internal and constituent-facing applications, leveraging open geo-databases to create services and information resources.

Initiator

A forming network of city, state, and federal agencies

Who should get involved?

State and city geospatial data producers and users

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text

Email us!

contact@publiccode.net

Connect with us

Foundation for Public Code is a chapter-based network of nonprofit organizations, with the parent organized as an association (vereeniging) of the constituent chapters registered under chamber of commerce (KvK) registration 74996452, and with identification number (RSIN) 860102294.

We're recognized as a public benefit organization (ANBI) by the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. Our first chapter, the Foundation for Public Code North America, is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with identification number (EIN) 92-2324481.

Digital public products need sustainable vehicles

Any open software developed by a government or their vendor needs a public product organization—an organization built around a sustainable, strategic, and collaborative model.

Defining the public product organization

A non-profit entity, established as a hub for open collaboration, which can be a cooperative comprised of public organizations. They steward and scale public software in perpetuity, by providing reliable maintenance and responsive development. They can:

Create governance structures

Steer design and specification

Orchestrate development

Respond to bugs and security concerns

Build sustainable financial models to allow for reliable, continuous delivery

Grow and support communities of practice, involving stakeholders and developers from public implementers and an ecosystem of vendors

Generate awareness of the product as an offering to public organizations who are looking to implement such a solution

Six pillars of successful public product organizations

1

Governance

Crucial to sustainable collaborative development is a community-endorsed model for how decisions are made about the core product and its future.

Good governance allows participating public entities to trust that their invested resources and policy commitments in a specific public product will continue to serve their constituents.

2

Community of practice

A dynamic ecosystem of implementers, developers, and stakeholders that sustains a public product needs active tending and orchestration.

A public product organization must provide contexts for communication, scheduling, and knowledge sharing resources to help the community thrive.

3

Codebase stewardship

The beating heart of a dynamic public product is its codebase. A clear process for open technical collaboration through continuous integration enables the entire community to power the engine that moves the product forward.

Codebase stewards should look to the Standard for Public Code for guidance on best practices.

4

Financial model

Perhaps the most common reason public product organizations fail is due to the lack of a sustainable financial model.

Public funding, philanthropic grants, membership dues, vendor certification, and service contracts enable public product organizations to fund their activities and product development.

5

Awareness & communications

As the growth of a public product community distributes the costs and responsibilities of development and maintenance across a larger set of contributors, increasing awareness of the product’s availability, adaptability, and successful deployment is key to the ecosystem’s success.

6

Organizational structure

Public product organizations can take many forms, and will have different vehicles in different jurisdictions, but a well defined organizational structure that spells out the different processes, roles and how they relate to each other is critical for successful long-term collaboration.

Our role

Thousands of public administrations, software developers, and open source collaboratives around the world are building digital public products that provide significant value to administrations and their constituencies.

The Foundation for Public Code works with these groups to establish public product organizations, which develop and maintain digital public products so that they are reliable, high-quality, and centered on public purpose.

More broadly, the Foundation supports communities of open practice, providing guidance on governance, codebase stewardship, financial modeling, technical and product steering processes, community growth and broader awareness. We also work with public administrations to understand how to implement and participate in public products, and with development communities on how to connect, grow, and sustain.

Our goal

A healthy ecosystem of stable digital infrastructural organizations with modern product offerings and development practices.

Examples of public code

DIIA

Groundbreaking mobile application that connects 19 million Ukrainians with more than 120 government services. One of the most modern “e-state” platforms in the world.

The Foundation worked with the Ukrainian DIIA team on the process of replicating the codebase to Estonia, and supported the decision to open the codebase from the very beginning.

Now, we are helping other public administrations understand how to implement and participate in DIIA.

Creator

Ukraine Ministry of Digital Transformation

Primary Replicator

National and State Governments

Who should get involved?

State governments looking to implement e-state mobile platforms

Learn more

Visit

diia.gov.ua

linked text

Notify

GOV.UK Notify makes it easy for public sector service teams to send emails, text messages and letters.

This project is an important one to track, because it has been used widely across public administrations, but not through an ideal process. Instead the codebase has been forked by the downstream users, which diverges the development process and does not capture the benefits of inter-administration collaboration.

The Foundation for Public Code is working with the various implementers to convene a community of practice and determine what collaborative efforts can still be effective.

Creator

UK Government Digital Service

Replicators

Canadian Digital Service, United States Digital Service, etc

Who should get involved?

City, state, and national governments in need of messaging solutions

Join the community of practice

Email us at

join-notify@publiccode.net

linked text

Spacecraft

Spacecraft is working to create an open modular server architecture for creating, orchestrating, and sharing room-scale or multi-room interactive spatial applications.

Use cases for public administrations and institutions include museum exhibition design, library archive visualization and exploration, urban planning simulation, or dynamic environments for theater, dance, and music performance.

A game engine orchestrates screens, projectors, speakers, lighting, and any number of mobile devices into immersive interactive environments.

Initiator

A forming network of public institutions to procure new platforms

Who should get involved?

State and city and public institution spatial experience designers

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text

Public Geospatial Server

One of the primary building blocks of a digitally transformed public service is geospatial data, which enables powerful applications across almost all facets of municipal and state administration.

While there are many applications with extensive functionality that serve this need, the Public Geospatial Server is a baseline open platform which public administrations can use to make embeddable maps for internal and constituent-facing applications, leveraging open geo-databases to create services and information resources.

Initiator

A forming network of city, state, and federal agencies

Who should get involved?

State and city geospatial data producers and users

Learn more

Email us at

contact@publiccode.net

linked text