How can governments ensure that they get their money’s worth when they embrace open government reforms? Ongoing research suggests that open government reforms—those that promote transparency, participation, and accountability—may lead to better development outcomes if properly implemented by governments. However, governments must navigate the myriad of initiative options as they strive to improve citizens’ quality … Read more
Today’s topic for Copyright Week is “You Bought It, You Own It, You Fix It”, which means that copyright law shouldn’t interfere with your freedom to own your stuff however you see fit: to repair it, tinker with it, recycle it, use it on any device, lend it, and then give it away (or … Read more
The WikiCup is a championship that has taken place every year on Wikipedia since 2007. The Cup is played and won by skill of editing. The purpose of the Cup is to encourage content improvement and make editing on Wikipedia more fun. The 2017 WikiCup begins on January 1; signups close on February 5. The … Read more
As the population of cities is expected to grow, from being home to just over 50% of the world’s population in 2015 to 60% by 2030, finding innovative solutions to improving urban resilience becomes even more pressing. Cities around the world are struggling under combined pressures, both manmade and natural. Whether it be population growth … Read more
After almost two years of development the new stable major release GRASS GIS 7.2.0 is available. It provides more than 1950 stability fixes and manual improvements compared to the former stable release version 7.0.5. The new version includes a series of new modules to analyse raster and vector data along with new temporal algebra functionality.More … Read more
Around the world, plant breeders are resisting what they see as corporate control of the food supply by making seeds available for other breeders to use. This article reports on a number of important new initiatives that have the potential to integrate the various projects and movements working against the enclosure of living material and … Read more
Open data is already a reality for scientific researchers, especially for those in Social Sciences. Researchers are making data openly available and — in turn — are re-using open data from others in their research. For a lot of researchers, a data citation has a much value as an article citation. These are some of … Read more
In recent weeks, OSHWA met one of its initial goals: to start certifying open-source hardware. The goal of certification is to clearly identify open-source hardware separate from the mish-mash of other hardware products. The certification allows hardware designs to be replicated. For certification, the Open Source Hardware Association requires hardware creators to publish a bill-of-materials list, software, … Read more
Open source software provides an easy and affordable way to improve existing public services. According to the EC report ‘Analysis of the Value of New Generation of eGovernment Services and How Can the Public Sector Become an Agent of Innovation through ICT‘, it allows a single developer to incrementally build human services based on publicly … Read more
Using open source has set the city of Limerick (Ireland) free to modernise its organisation. The city merged several isolated department front-desks into one modern customer centre, with the customer relations management system and other open source solutions greatly improving service levels. Not encumbered by the limitations of proprietary licences, Limerick could customise applications to … Read more
