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Government Open Code Collaborative

The following is pulled from the P2P Foundation wiki page on GOCC maintaining a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The GOCC was a voluntary collaboration between public sector entities and non-profit academic institutions created for the purpose of encouraging the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed.

Former URL: http://www.gocc.gov/

Currently inactive, see Status update below.

Description

“The GOCC, which began in 2003 and was officially launched in 2004, was a “voluntary collaboration between public sector entities and non–profit academic institutions created for the purposes of encouraging the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities …” (Government Open Code Collaborative, 2005). The organization focused on collaboration between state and local level government organizations, and allowed limited access to academic institutions. The GOCC was generally seen as a repository for open source code to be reused by government entities, but the collaboration also saw itself as a place for government entities to share best practices and collaborate on code development. The hope was that the collaboration would help to reduce the cost of information technology within government and promote innovation through the sharing of investments and improvements to a large network of like agencies (GOCC, 2004a). As one GOCC participant put it, “we have very similar problems, why don’t we solve them once and share them?”

Origins

The story of the GOCC really begins before the organization was established, with a few interested parties in government and academia. Public officials, like Patrick McCormick, who was the Chief Information Officer for the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, had been working with open source software in an effort to create high quality services on a budget. As McCormick observed, at the same time, then Governor Mitt Romney brought in a secretary of administration and finance and a chief information officer who believed in the advantages of open source. Soon after, the Massachusetts Office of Administration and Finance began a discussion around open source, and this discussion would eventually lead to a policy directing state agencies to consider all information technology solutions, including open source (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2004). In December of 2003, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, along with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sponsored an event, the Open Code in Government Initiative, which was meant to determine interest in a government code sharing organization. This initial gathering led to the creation of the GOCC and the development of the governance structure, rules, and licensing approaches the organization would follow.

The community

At its peak, the GOCC had about 20 member organizations, primarily state agencies and municipal governments, plus one academic institution. Of the 20 member organizations, very few played an active role; the States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas, and the City of Newport News, Virginia seem to have carried the weight of the organization. Beyond memberships, there were an estimated 100 observers who were either interested in participating without belonging to a member organization or were interested in watching the organization evolve. Those involved with the GOCC effort had a tendency to come to the organization “already using [open source software] and enthusiastic,” as one participant put it. While participants were typically from state and local governments, there were very broad interests among the members; however, membership numbers were not large enough to develop specialized sub–groups based on the wants and needs of participants.” (http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2313/2065)

Status

“The GOCC has recently become inactive. Several factors contributed to this outcome. First, participants we spoke with noted that being an all volunteer effort, the GOCC was not the primary concern of any of the members, and as other projects and responsibilities arose, it was not uncommon for a participant to cease activity for some period of time. Related to this was that no dedicated resources were contributed to the project. Second, there was no specific project that they could use to demonstrate collaborative success and motivate further collaboration. And third was the departure of the elected chairperson from the organization and his position in state government. While there were efforts by members to fill gaps in leadership, the organization failed to elect a replacement chairperson, leaving the effort without a strong central leader.

But even with the demise of the GOCC as a collaborative virtual organization, many of the participants are still very interested in and involved with open source software (for example, some participated in the recent Government Open Source Conference (http://goscon.org/). Interviewees noted that there are ongoing efforts to salvage some components of the GOCC, such as the software repository.

In sum, the GOCC case shows that maintaining an all–volunteer collaborative effort between public employees across different government organizations is challenging. Some state–level legislation created barriers in their ability to create truly open (as opposed to gated) collaborations, and a lack of focus on creating and maintaining products of value for participants led to lower participation rates. Finally, the loss of the chairperson from the once active organization further reduced member motivation to collaborate.” (http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2313/2065)

More Information

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