Opening Keynote: Building Open Source Collaboration in Government
Keynote
Stuart Cohen, CEO, Open Source Development Lab

As Linux installed base continues to exceed the Unix installed base, government agencies and other industry verticals are starting to look for a broader set of open source software solutions. OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen will share with GOSCON attendees what is driving this increase and how government CIOs are managing open source deployments. Cohen will also explain how government can seize the opportunity for collaboration to build communities around open source software applications and how that leads to better, more sustainable software, reduced expenditures and more opportunities for integration and standardization of technologies.

Making Your Organization Open-Source Ready
Strategy
Bernard Golden, CEO, Navica

OK. You're convinced that open source is the way to go. Now what? This talk will focus on the key differences between proprietary and open source software, discuss setting appropriate policies to make the most effective use of open source as well as how to ensure open source product decisions integrate with existing software infrastructure, and describe the role of an Open Source Program Office. Attendees will learn how to make their organization open source professionals.

Open Source 101 for Managers
Operations
Corey Shields, Infrastructure Manager, Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSL)

A review of open source basics, definition of terms, how OSS is developed, licensed, distributed.

Community Source Development 101
Case Studies & Apps
Jason McKerr, VP Operations, JanRain

Community Source is a model for collaborative, Open Source software development that has a significant ability to help public and private sector companies deliver strategic, valuable services that are not a competitive advantage for those institutions. As Community Source grows, there are important issues facing institutions implementing the methodology such as financial management, governance, return on investment, and operations. All of these topics will be covered in this presentation.

Transit Software Alternatives Analysis – Using Open Source as a Baseline Alternative for an MMTPS
Transit Forum
Gerry Tumbali, PMP, Manager, Engineering & Technology, Regional Transportation Authority of Chicago

The Regional Transportation Authority of Chicago was awarded an FTA grant to develop a Multimodal Trip Planner System (MMTPS). The concept of the MMTPS is to integrate transit trip itineraries, driving directions, and real-time roadway and transit information.

This presentation will review the technologies considered for achieving the trip planning functionality as well as the analytical framework that will be used to select the final solution. Open Source was the baseline alternative to which all others were considered. Current wireframes will also be demonstrated.

Open discussion will follow the presentation. Topics include:

• Should all FTA funded software development be OS?
• What role do the vendors have?
• What is required for portability?

Executive Panel: Open Source & Public Procurement; How do we get there from here?
Strategy, Operations
Ken Disbrow, Public Knowledge LLC, Moderator.

What are some of the strategies and tactics employed today in procuring open source software in the public sector? What are some of the barriers on both sides of the vendor-customer equation, and are they real or perceived? The goal of the session is to promote better understanding of the public sector procurement process and how public sector agencies and open source software vendors/creators can better work together. The panel will consist of CIO’s and staff from public sector agencies who have or are currently working to procure open source software for their organization. Audience participation will be encouraged throughout the discussion. Representatives from both the public sector and open source community are encouraged to attend.

Pakistan's Open Source Initiatives
Case Studies & Apps
Sher Shah Farooq, Security Expert, Open Source Resource Center, Pakistan

Sher Shah Faroog will dicuss Pakistan's successes in bringing together government and private sector efforts.

Web Mapping Alternatives Analysis
Transit Forum
Bibiana Kamler McHugh, IT Manager, GIS and Location Based Services, TriMet & Scott Davis , Author & Senior Software Engineer, Open Logic

With the advent of new technologies and the growing customers’ needs (and expectations) to facilitate transit information spatially, TriMet studied several alternatives to facilitate internet mapping: Google Maps Enterprise API, Yahoo Maps API, ArcIMS, ArcGIS Server, MapServer, and GeoServer. The latter two options are Open Source solutions. Please join us as we share our results and future plans for development.

Callisto: Large Scale Collaboration
Keynote
Ward Cunningham, Director of Committer Community Development, Eclipse

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing a vendor-neutral open development platform and application frameworks for building software. In June of this year ten major Eclipse projects released new software on the same day in a cross-project collaboration called the Callisto Simultaneous Release. This work supports ecosystem members by removing release schedule and version uncertainty effecting their own projects.

This talk will reflect on the Callisto experience as a maturing of large scale collaboration in a competitive commercial environment. We will be quick to generalize our lessons learned to public/private collaborations wishing to exploit the unique properties of open source software.

Open Technology Development Road Map
Strategy
John Scott, Director of Open Integration, Radient Blue Technologies

John recently co-authored the “Open Technology Development Road Map” (OTD) for the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary for Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts. Released just weeks ago, Scott’s report has drawn widespread attention, particularly for its discussion of how to introduce open source products into the complex Defense procurement process – a major development for proponents of government use of such software. Because open source programs are typically distributed free of charge and shared widely among developers in the programming community, some organizations have struggled with how to consider them within procurement guidelines that hinge on purchase prices and proprietary rights. John will present the OTD as well as insights into its development and implementation of interest to all levels of government.

Open Source Software Economics (and Licensing) in One Lesson
Operations
Stephen Walli, Chief Technology Officer and VP Engineering, Descant, Inc.

There is a lot of confusion about economic models for free and open source software. Why do people work on software for free? Is the quality "good enough" when the software is "good enough"? How do I get support for something that's given away for free? Likewise there remains continued confusion and concern around open source software licensing and litigation. Will I get sued if I use open source software? Will I need to publish all my software if I use open source?

The theme of the talk centers on several very simple premises to set the context in which to think about open source software, demonstrating that the audience already understands how open source software "works", that open source software licensing is straight forward, and intellectual property concerns are largely unfounded.

Open Visualization: NASA World Wind
Case Studies and Apps
Patrick Hogan, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

NASA World Wind has only one goal, to provide the maximum opportunity for geospatial information to be experienced, be it education, science, research, business, or government. The benefits to understanding for information delivered in the context of its 4D virtual reality are extraordinary.

The NASA World Wind visualization platform is open source and therefore lends itself well to being extended to service *any* requirements, be they proprietary and commercial or simply available. Data accessibility is highly optimized using standard formats including internationally certified open standards (i.e., Web Services, WMS, WFS, and WCS).

Although proprietary applications can be built based on World Wind, and proprietary data delivered that leverage World Wind, there is nothing proprietary about the visualization platform itself or the multiple planetary data sets readily available, including global animations of current weather.

NASA World Wind is being used by NASA research teams as well as being a formal part of high school and university curriculum. The National Guard uses World Wind for emergency response activities and State governments have incorporated high resolution imagery for GIS management as well as for their cross-agency emergency response activities. The U.S. federal government uses NASA World Wind for a myriad of GIS and security-related issues (NSA, NGA, DOE, etc.).

Release of the TimeTable Publisher Application
Transit Forum
Frank Purcell, Software Engineer, TriMet & Michael J. Berman, Program Manager GIS, Management Information and Transit Technology

Raw scheduling data requires preparation for public use that is normally a tedious and time-consuming manual process for most transit agencies. The TimeTable Publisher is a single system that takes raw scheduling data as input from various sources, and outputs timetables into various formats for public use. TriMet began development on the TimeTable Publisher in early 2006 with the intention of sharing it with other transit agencies.

This will be a round table discussion, where ideas and issues can be exchanged, and interest in the project can be gauged. To kick-start the discussion, the following topics will be introduced:

• Brief overview and demonstration of the TimeTable Publisher.
• Multiple agency use: portability aspects will be shared from a test implementation at King County Metro
• This tool will leverage the Google Transit Feed Specification file format (which Google intends to make an open standard) as the primary data input for raw scheduling data.
• Topic: how the TimeTable Publisher (and tools like it) will benefit from the Google Transit Feed Spec. One goal of the TimeTable publisher is minimal coding / configuration to be up and running. With multiple agencies readying their data for Google Transit in a common data format, that minimal coding goal has a reasonable chance for success.

Strategy

tba

CARB: One Agency's Experience with Open Source
Operations
Bill Welty, CIO, State of California Air Resources Board

Description TBA. Thank you for your patience.

Massachusetts Open Initiatives
Case Studies & Apps
Tim Vaverchak, Manager of Shared Services, Information Technology Division, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Tim will share Massachusetts' wealth of state experience with the adoption of open standards, an update on the Open Document Format (ODF) project, as well as other Massachusetts open initiatives.

Transit Data Models as a Foundation for "Open" Interfaces and Data Sharing
Transit Forum
Paula Okunieff, Senior Engineer, Consensus Systems Technologies Corp. & Mike Gilligan, Software Engineer, TriMet

As most established industries, transit agencies differ in their description and use of transit data concepts. These differences, though subtle, are an impediment to sharing data, deploying shared applications or deploying open source software. This has been recognized by several standard development efforts worldwide that are deploying web services for related industries. Among the efforts include the Geo-Spatial One Stop and TransModel (European Union transit reference’s data model effort). Several regional initiatives developed reference data models or database systems to accommodate and integrate schedule and related data sets from various public transportation organizations in particular the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Schedule Data Profile and Transit Data Portal Development effort.

The presentation will review the scope and benefits of these reference models, their derivative implementation standards and deployed projects will be described. A comparison of several models and the Google Transit Feed Specification file format will also be previewed. A discussion following the presentation will address whether Transit should coalesce around one reference model or whether several models are needed.

From Silos to Ecosystems
Keynote
Brian Behlendorf, CTO, CollabNet

Collaboration in Government may be a better alternative then “buy” or “build”. Open Source is proof that when there is a commonality of need and a collective desire to address it, the collaborative development process works. Let’s make it work for Government.

CIO Panel: Getting Started with Open Source
Strategy, Operations
Moderator: Ben Berry, CIO, Oregon Department of Transportation

Odds are slim that you don’t already have open source software in your IT shop today. But how does an organization truly leverage its benefits and manage its risks, and where does it start? Our panel will share their experience; from downloading sophisticated applications to replacing unsupported legacy tools; from a measured strategy to crisis response; from building internal skill sets to developing formal policies. Audience participation is encouraged.

Building Online Open Source Communities
Case Studies & Apps
Larry Augustin

One of the hardest parts of utilizing Open Source is building true community involvement. The benefits of Open Source only accrue when an outside third party community participates. This talk will describe various ways to help engage a community around your Open Source project.

Google Maps and Transit
Transit Forum

Stephanie Hannon is Product Manager for Google Transit. Prior to taking over Transit, she was Product Manager for Gmail, Google's webmail product. Stephanie started her career as a software engineer at Cisco Systems, where she worked for six years. Stephanie has a B.S. Computer Systems Engineering and M.S.E.E. from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Chris Harrelson is a software engineer at Google and the engineering lead for Google Transit Trip Planner. Before working on Transit, he worked on the anti-spam team for Gmail, Google's webmail product. Chris holds a B.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley

Update: OSS in the Federal Government and Opportunities for Collaboration
Strategy
Drew Ladner

Drew Ladner, founder and recent GM of the JBoss Government business and former CIO of the US Treasury, will provide an update on the adoption of open source in the U.S. federal government: benefits, challenges, and risks both at policy and implementation levels. In addition, he will address opportunities for using open source software, models, and technology to enhance collaboration in the public sector. Discussion will be driven by the interests of the audience, and Q&A will be encouraged.

Collaboratively Evolving Ecosystems
Operations
Andy Stein, IT Director, City of Newport News

Collaboratively Evolving Ecosystem is a new model for asynchrounous distributed software production. It leverages the commonality of need between peer organizations and public-private partnerships. The model assumes one or more champions which commit to the initial investment and produce the initial value. This value is freely made available in Open Source style that encourages reuse and collaboration.

Open Source GIS
Case Studies & Apps
Ken Hill, National Health Registry Project

The Health Registry Network (HRN) is an multi-state collaborative project. The project supports the development and maintenance of an open-source public health surveillance system. There are currently three State Health Departments and two Higher Education Universities participating in the collaborative.

Launched in September 2002, the HRN was initially designed for cancer incidence and mortality surveillance. Over the past 4 years, this multi-state collaborative added several new features that can be adapted for additional disease surveillance activities within the HRN. Two such features are geocoding and mapping tools that allow state health departments to plot and map cancer incidence data. These two features are useful for the initial stages of a cancer cluster investigation.

Ken will discuss how a developing collaborative deployed open-source geocoding and Web mapping tools in the HRN; including software tools, the development cycle and the funding model that created the system.

Transit Participation in Open Source GIS is encouraged

$16M Later…A Model to Pool Investments for Directed Open Source Projects"
Keynote
Brad Wheeler, CIO, Indiana University IT Services

Colleges and Universities have learned how to pool their software dollars, execute a disciplined project to develop enterprise scale software, give the software away, and then sustain it through open source communities with commercial support. Brad Wheeler will give an insider’s view of the Sakai and Kuali Projects and the Community Source model that is changing the rules for university systems.

Transit Forum Meeting