[ckan-dev] White House Open Data roundtable #4

Thu Jun 9 00:21:25 UTC 2016

Hiya folks,

I recently received an invitation to attend the 4th open data roundtable
hosted by the White House on the subject of, *How can we leverage
private-sector expertise and abilities?*

I submitted details from the perspective of Link Digital in March so it was
a bit of a shock to get the invite over the weekend. Despite the short
notice I've managed to arrange things for travel next week. I hope to learn
as much as I can from attendees while also sharing information from the
work Link Digital has been doing here in Australia.

As a company which provides establishment, hosting and support services
around CKAN we've had many experiences over the last three years that are
likely similar to others who work in this area. The standout point for us
is the following:

*Govt users of CKAN, which is certainly open source and free of license
costs, still need to consider and budget for supporting the ongoing
development of the software over the life of their contract terms.*

I think that more experienced providers of CKAN services will try to make
this point, or will try to quote services in a way that allows them to
spend additional time contributing work upstream, but without the right
procurement conditions it can be hard to competitively factor such costs
into the work our clients request us to quote on. This is the point I'd
like to most emphasize during the roundtable session next Wednesday.

>From the perspective of the CKAN Association steering group, which includes
representatives from Link Digital, Viderum and OpenGov, all with private
sector contracts, the experience appears to be fairly universal. I
understand that Ashley Casovan from Data.CA, also in the steering group,
has put a fair bit of thought and action into this point via the CKAN Govt
Working Group. So, in general, its a problem that is being looked at by at
least some Govt users.

Although I'm primarily attending the roundtable to voice a perspective from
Link Digital's viewpoint I'm very happy to take on any specific points
others in the CKAN community would like to share. Please feel free to send
me a direct email on anything you'd like to load into my head, or share
more broadly in reply to the group :)

Cheers,
Steven

*STEVEN DE COSTA *|
*EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR*www.linkdigital.com.au
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