Hi Max

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/authoritative-information

Basically, it's about something as bureaucratic as maintaining
authoritative organisation hierarchies, e.g. for local authorities
(which the tools was specifically made to support). Ideally, all
onboarding etc. of new staff could be done in this tool with
integrations in place to allow automatic access to other systems the
employees would need. Or, as it says in the article:

Thanks for sharing, and congratulations! I find this very interesting
and relevant, as it is another example for ready tools that
organisations like administrations can use, study, share, and improve.

In particular, I am happy about the following:

  "OS2 already involves 66 of the country’s 98 municipalities, and 35 IT
  services providers. 'OS2mo could grow to become a standard
  application, because it delivers a common service that all public
  organisations in Denmark need,' he says.

  According to Mr Thirifays, the software can even be adapted to other
  countries. 'It can already be used as a standalone tool, helping
  public services, companies, or NGOs keep their address book and access
  directory up to date.'"

The fact that it is supported by a wide range of companies and
administrations, and the ability to be adapted by other players as well
is a good indicator for its re-usability, which is a key asset for Free
Software projects.

It's important to distinguish between OS2 and our product OS2MO. OS2 is a collaboration between 66 municipalities, as the article states, and the idea is that the municipalities pool together their resources to create software they all need. Since this is always released as free software (normally the MPL, but this varies - some of the projects are under e.g. GPL3), the software is then available for all of them free of charge; of course, with a price tag depending of the TCO of operating it themselves or asking one of the associated vendors to do it.

All OS2 projects have a name that starts with "os2" and is described on this page:

https://os2.eu/produkter

(alas, only in Danish - there is an introduction in English here: https://os2.eu/node/332)

I think the collaboration originated in TING, which is/was a Drupal-bases CMS package with many customizations made and used by a large number of public libraries. Some OS2 products have been developed in-house in the municipalities, others have been procured with external vendors like my own company.

My company has developed and/or worked with a number of these products, e.g.

* OS2datascanner, a web and file system scanner to detect GDPR and other privacy violations (originally the use case was to detect possible leaking of citizen's confidential data to municipal web sites, which increasingly contain vast amounts of data)

* OS2borgerpc, which I presented at FOSDEM in 2014, when it was still called BibOS - a GNU/Linux based OS for public-facing PCs in libraries and municipal offices, with a central admin system to control and update them

* OS2display, a system for controlling info screens in public libraries and other places, also based on GNU/Linux and with central management (but the OS is controlled by os2borgerpc). This product was created by the municipality of Aarhus, but they asked us to take over the governance and development and sales to other municipalities as it's not really their line of work.

* OS2bos, a very new system for appropriation of funds for caseworkers in social services (specifically child protection services). This system just went into production in December!

So all of the 66 municipalities are not involved in OS2MO, but in somewhere between zero and many of these products. I should also add that while this model and idea is really wonderful, there are drawbacks. OS2, the coordinating organization, has very few resources - a coordinator and a few employees to help which are donated by some of the larger municipalities. (Thus, the coordinator is formally employed by the municipality of Aarhus.)

OS2 does not have funds to maintain these systems, so maintenance is paid by the procuring municipalities. And there is a - let's say, spectrum - of willingness to invest; thus, the municipality of Ballerup are completely committed to the concept of  "open source" as a rational digitization tool, and they are a really big customer of ours and have also really been reaping the benefits and savings of their investments. A few others are "big players" that help a lot of free software into being. Other participating municipal have a tendency to sit on the fence and wait for others to create the software and then latch onto it when it becomes available.  This is compensated by "enrollment plans" for municipalities that want to join the "common track" deployment instead of rolling their own from the source code, which can be demanding for a small organization. But it can be complicated. :-)

And, it is also the OS2 collaboration, and not the specific product, that has 35 associated service providers.

So, OS2MO is currently being deployed to 16 municipalities in Denmark, and as the article states, ideally it can be used to onboarding and offoarding of staff in these organizations, with integrations to directories and other systems to automatically give user access to relevant IT systems (most of which are proprietary in these landscapes). But we do hope more will jump on the bandwagon, and I know of at least one other vendor who's very interested in providing this system. So we're very definitely going in the right direction, and the whole OS2 collaboration is one of the most interesting free software related things to happen in Denmark in the last decade.

Best,

Carsten