Open source for statistics A stairway to heaven? Joint ECE/Eurostat/OECD Meeting on the Management of Statistical Information Systems (MSIS) Geneva, May 2004 Rune Gløersen Director of IT and Data Collection Statistics Norway

2 Topics covered  A general discussion on strategic aspects concerning Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS)  A short presentation of the purpose, current state and possible future for the Statistics Open Standards Working Group  Conclusions (if any)

3  Best practice. The Linux and Perl revolution has prepared the way for “share and reuse” best practice related to version management, testing, security and reliability assessment. When collaboration projects (running software pooling) are conducted by such practice, optimized investments may be derived  Interoperability and de facto standards. The successful dissemination of open source platforms, enforce main vendors to provide for this platform to be in business. E.g.; SAP, Intentia and Oracle are well off on their portfolio adjustments to Linux Aspects of open source applications

4 Aspects of open source applications (2)  Quality and flexibility. Commercial trusts and consortiums seem to overtake the leadership of open source development models. The combination of an emerging new business model and deep marketing understanding, provides a driving force for high quality software and open standards (e.g.; Sun, IBM and Novell)  Security. As proprietary software is hidden, security inspection is impossible. The open source possibility of code inspection, and security gap encountering is about to fortify in military software applications.  Economics. Organizations where labour and support costs are low, as the public sector, tend to have eager plans for open source software. This is due to the fact that license fees will turn to be a more significant cost factor in the budgets

5 Aspects of open source applications (3)  IT management skills. When the open-source discussion is not formally addressed, it’s likely that the developers introduce open source products in an ad- hoc manner. Then minimum skills required should be:  The cost balance; balancing the cost and skills required for proprietary upgrades vs. the cost of running a heterogeneous IT-portfolio (including a mix of free and commercial products)  The security and reliability requirements of the organization; awareness of the potential prioritized areas of open source appliances related to such requirements

6 Aspects of open source applications (4)  Developers skills. The success of open source projects, very much depends on utilizing best practice techniques  The governmental intentions. In broad outline, the European countries seem to have the same intentions of open software applications: interoperability, security and cost reduction. The statistical sector, as a whole, is perhaps not in the position to draw upon specific advantages of FLOSS – due to the lack of a common business model widely used

7 The Statistics Open Standards (SOS) Group  Established 1998 as a Nordic IT Management Group  Members: NSIs (IT function) in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway.  Broadened 1999 by  scope; Statistics Open Source  members; CBS Netherlands and the Swiss statistical office included  An initiative to establish a forum of common interest in SW development close to the NSIs need and strategy

8 Some main principles  Exchange of information (frankly speaking!)  Re-use components  Keep single-owner responsibility  No formality  No common funding  Two levels:  technical level  Steering Committee, have met approx. twice a year.

9 Common projects  Swe/de/nor development and use of common dissemination database (Statistical Databank)  Neuchâtel Classification Model  Dutch Cristal model  Gesmes data manager  Investigation and purchase of SuperStar II  XML  XML standards/interfaces  data collection  Coming up: web-services

10 Some experiences  Common projects close to NSIs needs make the best examples of cooperation  Difficult to bridge differences in technology, architecture and knowledge.  More or less hidden barriers in projects/products, which at a glance seem to be open and easy to implement  Clustering used to enhance bargaining power. SuperStar as an example  General appreciation of the informal exchange of information

11  License conditions of your proprietary software (extent of source code access, reproduction, interoperability, amongst others)  Matters of exceptional usage, when proprietary software license conditions will not be fulfilled  Preferred application areas within the organisation’s infrastructure (i.e. security and reliability applications, internet applications)  Organisational skills requirements  Adaptation to governmental overall strategy, if any Some check-points when considering FLOSS

12 Some conclusions when considering joint venture  Well defined interfaces in terms of adopted international standards or commonly agreed standards are key to success in any type of cooperation of this kind  While a strategy based on discussing needs, and then jumping to software development has shown to be a failure, mostly any cooperation based upon defined interfaces has shown to be a success  Pay attention to internal barriers for adoption  Technological  Architectural  Organisational  Human knowledge