https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1013776/2d1901043af26022/
'The adoption of open-source software in governments has had its ups and downs.
While open source seems like a "no-brainer", it turns out that governments can
be surprisingly resistant to using FOSS for a variety of reasons. Federico
González Waite spoke in the Open Government track at SCALE 22x in Pasadena,
California to recount his experiences working with and for the Mexican
government. He led multiple projects to switch away from proprietary, often
predatory, software companies with some success—and failure.
González Waite began by noting that he is a Mexican/Kiwi ("there's not many of
us", he said with a grin), who spent nine or ten years in high-level roles in
the Mexican government "promoting open-source implementations". Among other
things, he was the CTO for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; "I am actually
responsible for Mexicans having an electronic passport today." That was one of
the projects that he led and part of it was done with open-source software,
which is something that people find to be amazing, González Waite said. He
served in the office for national strategy under President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, eventually moving into the CEO role at the National Research and
Innovation Center for Mexico.
In all of his roles, he advocated using open source within the government; it
is never easy to be a "change-maker" of that sort, he said. He left the
government at the recent change of presidents (to Claudia Scheinbaum) and is
now working on "helping people do their own transformations" to open source,
while keeping an eye out for the next big thing. He noted that he would take
questions at the end and he might not be able to answer them all due to
confidentiality responsibilities, but he is "no longer a public official, so
that gives me a lot more leeway to talk freely". '
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
