Are you entirely new to open source? Start with the basics ↗
Many of the world’s best performing national, regional and local governments have realized that to meet the needs of the 21st century they must transition from licensing proprietary technical systems from corporations to owning and controlling their own systems built on open source technology.
Over 50% of the open source technologies used by governments all over the world were developed in the United States, and yet US government technologists are much less familiar with the terms and concepts of the global open source government movement than their counterparts around the world.
Software whose source code anyone can inspect, use, modify, and share. It’s about freedom and public auditability, not price.
Why NYC should careA handful of NYC agencies already publish code on GitHub on their own initiative. Endorsement would turn that scattered habit into a citywide standard.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗Eight commitments adopted by the UN’s Digital and Technology Network in 2025 defining how the UN system approaches software.
Why NYC should careEndorsement is a signature plus a roadmap, not a procurement overhaul — the entry ticket to a global community of practice.
Learn more · unite.un.org ↗A small team that coordinates an institution’s open source strategy: what to use, what to publish, how to contribute, and how to stay secure doing it.
Why NYC should careParis, Munich, and the UN itself run OSPOs. NYC’s Office of Technology & Innovation is the natural home for one.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗The shared digital rails a society runs on — identity, payments, data exchange. Like roads or the power grid, it works best as interoperable public infrastructure, not walled gardens.
Why NYC should carePlatforms like Decidim and X-Road are built by one government and reused by dozens. NYC can join that exchange instead of buying its own silo.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗A government’s ability to control its own digital destiny — to run, audit, and change the systems it depends on rather than being locked into any single vendor.
Why NYC should careEvery proprietary contract renewal NYC can’t walk away from is a sovereignty question. Open source is the strongest structural answer.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗Publicly documented formats and protocols that let systems from different makers work together — the difference between an ecosystem and a lock-in.
Why NYC should careWriting open standards into procurement is the single highest-leverage clause NYC’s buyers control.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗The principle that software paid for by the public should be available to the public as open source — adopted as policy by cities like Munich.
Why NYC should careA slogan NYC’s civic tech community already believes in; endorsement would make it official posture.
Learn more · FSFE ↗A dependency on a single vendor’s proprietary products that makes switching to a competitor difficult and costly — created by incompatible data formats, patents, or an ecosystem built to work only with that vendor’s other tools.
Why NYC should careNYC’s three-year, $57 million Microsoft agreement was negotiated by a buyer with no credible exit — a textbook case of the lock-in open source is built to avoid.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗Open source enables governments all over the world to create, strengthen and share solutions. Check out some of the open source catalogs, institutions and programs of the world’s leading governments.
Map data — catalogs: GovOSS (CC BY 4.0) · programs: Civic Tech Field Guide (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) · OSPOs: this site · boundaries: Natural Earth · snapshots 2026-08-18, 2026-08-07
The Digital Public Goods Alliance starts vetting open source solutions for the SDGs, the Secretary-General’s digital cooperation roadmap names digital public goods as essential, and "OSPOs for Good" convenes governments at UN Headquarters.
At the Summit of the Future, member states commit to shared principles for an open, safe digital future — with explicit support for digital public goods and infrastructure.
The UN’s Digital and Technology Network adopts eight principles — "open by default," "contribute back," and more. Seventeen organizations endorse, from the Open Source Initiative to the Linux Foundation.
Barcelona becomes the first city in the world to endorse the Principles, pairing the signature with an OSPO, a citizen agreement, and a municipal open source fund.
UN Open Source Week fills UN Headquarters with themed days on AI, digital public infrastructure, and OSPOs — the movement’s annual gathering, in New York.
Now that you know the basics —
Learn about the UN Open Source Principles →