Taxpayers fund the development and maintenance of many public sector websites. However, it is critical to examine the technological underpinnings of these websites, including whether they are based on open source solutions or proprietary software. In addition, it is important to understand where these websites are hosted and whether there are regional differences between states or recognisable trends in communities. Such insights can shed light not only on the financial aspects, but also the potential impact on security and innovation.
This project is a centralized knowledge database to provide transparency on the current state of web-based systems in the public sector. In detail, we provide:
- Open data: An overview of government web systems, their funding, and stakeholders.
- Maintenance state: Providing maintenance stats (e.g., used components, versions, known security vulnerabilities) of web systems.
- FOSS information: Percentage of Open Source based web systems.
We're dedicated to fostering an open-source community within the public sector. Streamlining public funding to promote collaboration and innovation, instead of finger pointing.
Vision
We provide transparency to the web-based system landscape of the public sector. With the principle of “public money, public code”, we encourage the use of open-source technologies to foster maintainability and innovation in the public sector.
Project Scope
- Providing an overview of the public web system inventory.
- Making government websites a safer place.
- Providing additional software information for websites of public institutions.
Project Context
- Governments spend large amounts of money on the development of web-based systems but often end up with closed-source, hard to maintain systems.
- Government institutions often outsource software development, which, among other things, leads to a lack in IT knowledge, and a lack of awareness about maintainability and Open Source software development.
- Lately, government websites have been the primary target of hackers to destabilize democracies, and gain access to internal infrastructure.
