SaMoLo in Government Open Source Projects Lessons from the CONNECT project

A Nation’s Call to Action “We’ll be on our way to computerizing all of America’s medical records, which won’t just eliminate inefficiencies, save billions of dollars and create tens of thousands of jobs – but will save lives by reducing deadly medical errors.” – President Barack Obama, February 4,

What is CONNECT? CONNECT is a software solution that supports health information exchange. CONNECT uses Nationwide Health Information Network standards and governance to ensure HIEs interoperate with other current and future exchanges. CONNECT can be used to: Set up a health information exchange within an organization. Tie a health information exchange into other HIEs including the Exchange. 3

Federal Health Architecture Collaborative Mindset Seeded CONNECT FHA ensures Federal participation in ONC-led initiatives E-gov initiative managed by ONC within HHS 20+ federal agencies participate in FHA 4

CONNECT Open Source Project Since (Date) CONNECT was “released as open source code” to keep costs low and to promote widespread adoption to encourage health information exchange. FHA enabled cross-agency collaboration, aggregate + coordinated benefits Use of open source tools accelerated development Open source community contributed to development CONNECT is in the midst of transitioning to a fully open-source community-driven project. 5

Spectrum of Government Open Source Projects 6 Project Uses Open Source Components Open Source License Source Code “Published” Source Code Hosted/Available Government-Sponsored Open Source Project Open Source Project that Originated in the Government

SaMoLo Technique used in Agile software projects to guide project or sprint retrospective 7 “Same As” “More Of” “Less Of” Sa Mo Lo

SaMoLo – Same As Open and broad collaboration Honesty Leveraging common needs Openly expose the release planning … and requirements …. and the process Hybrid balance between funding and non-funding partner requirements!! 8

SaMoLo – More Of Up-front investment - Coding standards!! - Flexible infrastructure - Structured, defined, and understood internal and external communication plans - Definition of roles and governance Sustained investment in community - Dedicated technical resources to outreach and nurturing of the community (tricky labor category?) Acknowledgment that you – your office, your program, and your contract support – are going to REALLY expose yourselves – process, quality, risks, issues, results 9

SaMoLo – More Of Long-term planning – discuss the exit strategy early. And know that it will change. 10

SaMoLo – Less Of Caveat: These did not occur with FHA/CONNECT, but in general are behaviors that need to be set aside when you’re running an open source project Fear Rigidity Tolerance of dissention/posturing among collaborating contractor teams – the only focus should be support the mission, on the project faces risk 11

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Upcoming Community Events June 28, 2012 (11am) Webinar on GitHub July 2, 2012 (1pm) Next sprint planning meeting August 1, 2012 CONNECT Release August, 2012 CONNECT Code-a-Thon 14

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