On 22 May 2025, over 50 public sector professionals, open source advocates, and institutional representatives joined the OSOR team for a webinar on “The Role of OSPOs in Transforming the European Public Sector” to explore how Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) are supporting digital transformation and fostering open collaboration within public administrations.

The two-hour session featured a presentation of the study on OSPOs and an engaging panel discussion, offering valuable insights into how OSPOs can enable structured, scalable, and strategic adoption of open source software  across government bodies.

Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) can be defined as centres of competency within organisations, established to support and manage open source operations. OSPOs enable the use, creation, release, and collaboration on open source projects while fostering an open source culture across the organisation. In the public sector, they also serve as change agents and policy enablers. 

This question was addressed by Johan Linåker – senior researcher at RISE, the national research institute of Sweden, and adjunct assistant professor at Lund university who presented during the webinar the OSOR report titled “Public Sector Open Source Program Offices – Archetypes for How to Grow (Common) Institutional Capabilities” (to be published soon).

This presentation highlighted:

• Challenges in the public sector, such as limited knowledge, cultural resistance, and limited resources;
• The evolving roles of OSPOs;
• Six archetypes of public sector OSPOs, including national government OSPOs, institutional OSPOs, local government OSPOs, association-based OSPOs, academic OSPOs, and civil society OSPOs, their characteristics with illustrative case studies from various countries;
• Insights on how OSPOs can foster collaboration, capacity building, and sustainability.

The session continued with a rich panel discussion, moderated by the OSOR team, that showcased a diversity of real-world OSPO implementations in the European public sector. Panellists included:

• Miguel Díez Blanco, Head of the European Commission (EC) OSPO 

  About the EC OSPO: The EC OSPO, created in 2020, acts as a catalyst for change within the European Commission, driving the adoption of open source principles and practices. It serves as a point of reference and builds bridges between the EC and the open source ecosystem through outreach efforts, including the OSPO network and contacts in the open source community. Their missions include: 

  • Removing legal barriers: The EC OSPO played a crucial role in removing legal barriers by introducing policy changes that favour the publication of source code as open source. This has reduced constraints for EC developers, enabling them to contribute more freely to open source projects like Drupal.
  • Promoting open source solutions: The EC OSPO built their own repository for open source solution call code.europa.eu, with over 800 external projects now available. Internally, the EC OSPO encourages code sharing within the organisation for projects not yet ready for open source. The EC OSPO also established an open source lab to allow other departments to propose open source solutions for inclusion in the Commission's portfolio of solutions.
  • Integrate open source into IT governance tools: The EC proposed guidelines in PM² to encourage the consideration of open source solutions during project management. These guidelines encourage project managers to evaluate if open source options are available and if they are adopting open source practices.
  • Building an EU Open Source Solutions Catalogue: The EU Open Source Solutions Catalogue aggregates open source software developed by public administrations in a central place now includes 800 solutions and is based on metadata standards. The EC OSPO calls for more solutions to be included and aims to improve the governance body to provide more detailed information on the solutions. 

• Boris van Hoytema, coordinator of the OSPO in the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands (MinBZK OSPO). 

  About MinBZK OSPO: The ministry manages over 783 repositories, offering numerous components and connectors for interoperability between organisations. They aim to promote open source working, not just software, but also processes surrounding it. They aspire to be a model for other government administrations in the Netherlands. The strategy includes rules, agreements, monitoring, policy, and focuses on culture, communication, and training. The OSPO, founded 2 years ago, aims to remove legal barriers around open source and collaborate with other OSPOs, public administrations, companies, and developers. It is part of the Chief Technology Officer cluster, supported by a small tech team and an external network. The OSPO provides continuous services, resolves issues, supports open source initiatives, and offers connections and training.

   

• Clare Dillon, PhD Researcher and community lead at CURIOSS (Community for University and Research Institution OSPOs).

  About CURIOSS an Academic OSPOs: CURIOSS, established in 2023, is a community of over 50 individuals working in OSPOs within academic contexts or OSPO-like organisations. The community provides dedicated spaces for shared learning, resource adaptation, and co-creation relevant to OSPOs. It seeks to promote awareness of academic OSPOs and collaborate with other organisations and communities.

  The specific goals of academic OSPOs include removing blockers, scaling services and building capacity around open source as well as:

  • Promoting open source excellence within the context of open science or open research which can be a national or institutional strategies to embed openness in research practices. Some of the activities include open source guidance.
  • Enhancing research impact: Support technology transfer by managing intellectual property, spinouts, and commercialisation of research and promote social and research impact of open source as a research output, beyond just commercial benefits.
  • Developing skills & education: Embed open source skills into curricula, not only in technology courses but also in interdisciplinary fields (like bioinformatics) and create opportunities like internship programs, hackathons, and student engagement initiatives to prepare the next generation of contributors.
     

  The types of work undertaken by different OSPOs will depend on the mission of their university, the resources available and the strategic direction of the service. Their activities may include OSPO:  

  • Developing and sharing best practices;
  • Educational efforts;
  • Working with tech transfer and external partners;
  • Tools and infrastructure to support open source;
  • Community building;
  • Support the creation of new open source software by the academic community;
  • Advocacy and policy;
  • Funding and financial support.

During the panel conversation, speakers shared insights into what it takes to successfully establish an OSPO. The following success factors emerged:

• Alignment with organisational goals: ensuring that the OSPO's objectives align with the broader goals of the organisation is crucial. This helps justify sustained investment to maximise impact.
• Understanding organisational culture: embedding the OSPO into the organisation’s existing culture and processes—both formal and informal—is essential. This means recognising how things are done, finding cultural entry points, and aligning the OSPO’s efforts with the organisation’s way of working to ensure lasting impact.
• Management support: having strong support from management is vital for the OSPO's success. This involves explaining the benefits of open source and ensuring that the OSPO is endorsed by its hierarchy.
• Formalisation of the OSPO: Making the OSPO official through legal or formal documentation helps ensure its survival amidst political changes.
• Finding place in the ecosystem: what does the open source ecosystem look like in your context? What organisations are undertaking similar initiatives? Identify collaborators with common goals to collaborate on technology or organisational aspects, whether nationally, locally, or internationally.

During the panel session, speakers shared their approaches to assessing the impact of their OSPOs, revealing a spectrum of perspectives ranging from quantitative metrics to qualitative evaluation.

• Quantitative measure: Miguel Díez Blanco emphasised the importance of delivering measurable results. The EC OSPO actively tracks a variety of indicators for the open source repositories or the open source catalogue such as the number of users engaging with the repository, the number of solutions listed in the catalogue, and the quantity of internal repositories. They are also working towards tracing contributions and reuse, acknowledging the value of demonstrating tangible engagement with open source initiatives.
• Qualitative Focus: In contrast, Boris van Hoytema described the qualitative approach adopted in the Netherlands. Rather than relying on metrics, they focus on the extent to whichopen source contributes to broader strategic goals. Boris emphasised that some of the most important impacts—such as removing barriers to collaboration—cannot be captured through simple KPIs. The OSPO’s position within the organisation enables them to resist the pressure to reduce success to numbers, allowing for a more mission-aligned evaluation.

The master deck, which contains all the key materials presented during the webinar, is available here.

The recording of the webinar is accessible here.