So basically we wanted to have this discussion also for the audience to be able to ask any questions
about the two past presentations that we had. I'm very happy that we're able to have the
past speakers. I don't know if there's any already questions from the audience if there's any
things we want to react on regarding both the question of digital public goods, the question
of digital comments, obviously this are a concept that are being slowly adopted in Europe,
some of them more in better ways than others. And so it is very interesting also to see
the reaction of the open source community to this and for that's also why we wanted to
bring it to you here today. So yeah, I don't know if I, there's anyone that wants to open
the round of questions. Yes, please and I'm going to give it a say.
So we really nailed the timing on this one. We just put out a blog on Friday myself and the, yes, sorry. Great practice. So the question was on the conceptual overlaps between digital
comments and DPGs, the audience member felt that it was insufficiently explained to them. So in my opinion, great. So we just put out a blog about this on Friday myself as a representative of
NGI Commons with the digital public goods alliance. And basically the kind of governance dimension is really where things start to differ. But there are important differences in the kind of digital comments term around this aspect of consensus and standardization. So there's an open standard to kind of modify, there's an open standard to verify what is and is not a digital public good. That is not in place for digital commons, at least not yet. In fact, I probably, if you asked me today, wouldn't advocate for a standard for digital commons,
because the aspiration around digital commons is to kind of add a layer of intention around public interest technology and thinking about kind of collective governance community building ownership modes of production.
But that's not something that the open source community is always friend to having mandated or put upon them. And so that's not really what we're trying to do. What we're trying to say is that these public interest technologies, which have larger societal applications are being used as part of foundational infrastructures.
Should have more obligations and should aspire towards something a little bit higher. So that's kind of how I imagine a digital commons, digital public goods by comparison. There's a very kind of well understood and consensus driven definition.
And there's also a specific application towards the SDGs and certain provisions around privacy, do you know harm, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, anything you'd add? Yeah, sure.
I'd just like to add one more point to this. I think, so basically, when it comes to digital commons, I think it's almost like DPGs plus, right?
Because everything that comes under the ambit of being a digital public good is something that we would all agree to for the definition of a digital commons.
But what really is an addition to that is the governance mechanism and how that is more community driven. So as a part of the standard, we do have that as a consideration.
And in fact, because it is an open standard, we want to push it in that direction as well.
But I think as a concept, digital commons stands more for that, right? If I'm not wrong, yeah?
Yeah, so for those keeping track of the math, that's something like open source plus plus plus. You know, we don't want it to be so didactic.
We ultimately don't want digital commons to be an exclusionary term. We want it to be something that is additive to the conversation.
So yeah, we're not looking at a standard right now, but that's kind of where we're at in terms of our thinking about it.
And then yeah.
Just as a project that is a digital public good, the one big difference is there's a certification process that the projects have to go through is very rigorous.
It took a primarily about a year to do it. We've done it twice already.
And that's a significant advantage when we're going to a government and saying,
consider using this and here is why here we can meet certain standards.
And then the question regarding digital commons.
If not, I have one. Maybe on the questions of how the question of the use of DPGs and commons in the public sector is going in, especially in Europe, where are we right now?
So the question was around kind of where are we at in terms of use of digital commons in the public sector or digital public goods in the public sector particularly in Europe.
I would say that digital commons is resonating with many policy makers in Europe because there has been kind of let's say a concentration of power in a lot of in a handful of big tech companies.
But also kind of a dissatisfaction with the status quo. And so the idea of digital commons around kind of really breaking down these concentrations of power and talking about public digital infrastructure as being based on commons is something that's very resonating.
And we see this happening organically through collaborations between member states as we saw in the last block.
So I think that it's language which is really resonating because of the specific regulatory history that Europe has undergone.
And so Europe isn't really talking about digital public goods in a huge way, but there are huge pockets of activity around digital public goods happening in member states.
So yeah digital commons seems to be more part of the emerging policy conversation than DPGs in Europe, but they're both kind of at the table.
And there's a lot more happening on DPGs globally, which is what I guess flashy about.
Yeah, thank you. And just to add, it's pretty much what John already shared around this around the public goods being used itself in Europe. So for example, you have open IMS.
Open IMS is that loud enough. Okay, and it's a social protection like platform used for beneficiaries services built in Germany in 2016.
And the concept around that was like initially you had like different modular and monolids infrastructure that was used by the word bank.
And like 2016 you had them imagine together all the different infrastructures they had into different like,
modular freight infrastructures around like, I'm voucher services, cash transfers. And all of this happened just because of the consensus around standards that John parents and earlier.
And as such, these solutions could be interoperable across multiple other platforms.
And you have stuff like a line you would like the FHIR standard open each other standards.
And all of this wouldn't have happened if there was no consensus on what that infrastructure definition looks like.
Right, and now you have countries, you have multi lateral organizations also rallying around to ensure that these solutions are being scaled.
And as such, when MIS now is used in different countries, just because of the payment, it's pretty much similar to what Nick shared around the concept of due to commerce.
And you have due to public goods were also having the government structure and all of that. And it's been using Europe and also been exported down to all the countries across the world.
Any questions?
Yeah.
Please.
Good.
So do you.
The.
So.
I.
And we find that most used to are real similar to the hardware and there isn't getting a problem.
That's much as for.
I.
What.
Our past isn't Nick right now the digital public is focused on four categories open software data content collections in the I systems.
But I think there's something that's really covered in data commas.
Yeah, and just to reiterate the question for online, the question was around like where does open hardware is a field stand in relationship to these concepts.
So digital commons include open data open content open knowledge open source software.
Open hardware.
We recently participated in initiative called OS awards dot you, which honored some excellent examples of open source from the open source ecosystem.
And that officially has a mandate for open source software and open hardware.
As kind of the mandate of that project, I started looking more into open hardware in relation to digital commons.
So it has been part of our understanding or a definition, but I wouldn't say that we've arrived at kind of an aligned understanding of how open hardware can be thought of as a commons.
But certainly it should be part of the conversation.
And on Thursday, we honored a great excellent speaker named David Cartelis who participated in the Arduino project as an early co founder.
And I was talking to him a little bit about the the concept and it seems to resonate with him in some ways.
So I'm trying to kind of expand on that hopefully.
And one of the things I'll be doing, I'm responsible for community engagement at the NGI Commons project is to engage those different fields of open and create more understanding around open data open content.
Open source software open hardware and how they all kind of intersect with the concept.
So hopefully more to come in that space.
Yeah.
And just one addition, it's a little bit beyond what you're saying, but in the EU was a very significant factor is sovereignty around where the application is hosted both the data.
That's incredibly important.
Usually in the EU, the country is going to want to host the data and the application in their country on their cloud.
In the last question, this will be a last one, please.
The question was, is this EU generally or country by country and it is it's always country by country for us and to be fair, this is an issue that comes up across the world.
So for example, China is using Primero at a province level and they definitely did not want to have it hosted by us.
I think we have time for one last question, if anybody wants to.
Put their hand up.
Yeah.
Many thanks for coming and yeah.