Tuesday 3 March 2009

OpenSourceGov

There is a new instance of mediawiki in town:

This site has been created to support the UK government's open source strategy and action plan. Hopefully soon, anyone who wants to know a bit about what open source is, and what it can do, will be able to find plenty to read here. – OpenSourceGov.

Didn't take long to find out who was behind it (whois helps with this sorts of thing) Dave Briggs, who says on his site:

Last week, the Cabinet Office published a new action plan for government and open source, to level the playing field when it comes to procuring software. [Snipped]
Excellent stuff. There is a Netvibes dashboard set up to help monitor what is being said online, some of which is a little cynical and critical. I tend to prefer to be relentlessly positive.

Anyway, the situation with open source is a little similar to that of social web stuff, in that knowledge about it, and its possibilities, are somewhat limited. We need open source digital mentors! Alternatively, we just need a wiki. – davepress.net

It will be very interesting to see how this develops, as with all of these kind of thingsTM it will need to strike a cord and build a community to give it momentum and keep up to date.

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