Gunnar Hellekson

I’m the Chief Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s US Public Sector group, where I work with systems integrators and government agencies to encourage the use of open source software in government. I was recently named co-chair of Open Source for America and one of Federal Computer Week’s Fed 100 for 2010. I’m an active member of the Military Open Source working group, the RHCE Loopback, and a GTO-21 commissioner. I also help run Red Hat’s gov-sec mailing list. I perk up when people talk about cross-domain security, edge innovation, and interagency collaboration through the open source model. Prior to joining Red Hat, I worked as a developer, systems administrator, and IT director for a series of internet businesses. I’ve also been a business and IT consultant to not-for-profit organizations in New York City. During that time, I spearheaded the reform of safety regulations for New York State’s electrical utilities following the tragic death of Jodie Lane. When I’m not spreading the Good News about open source, I’m wishing I had a dog. You can find what I’m reading on Goodreads, what I’m saying on Twitter, and what I’m listening to on last.fm.

The future of the government forges

The GSA is currently planning forge.gov, which is widely assumed to be based on forge.mil, the much-discussed collaboration platform from the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. forge.mil is a pretty incredible idea: a single destination for testing, certification, and software development in the Defense Department.

    Spook developer speaks!

    I had a chance to talk with Matthew Burton, the former intelligence analyst turned open source cause celebre who just launched a tool that helps frame and understand arguments with imperfect evidence. It’s based on method called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), which has been around for quite some time. Matthew and his friend Josh Knowles, though, have a tool that allows the ACH method to be used by multiple participants simultaneously. It’s fascinating stuff, so I’m grateful that he took the time to talk with me.

      Open source in government: Who was first?

      Brian Purchia of Burson-Marsteller has a post over on GovFresh about the value of open source to unions. His argument pivots on cost-savings. I think you could make a more expansive argument that includes risk mitigation and innovation, but describing the advantage to unions is an interesting angle I hadn’t seen before.

        Lockheed goes open source. Blankenhorn hates it.

        I was really pleased to read the announcement that Lockheed Martin's social networking platform, EurekaStreams, was released as an open source project today. Lockheed is a very conservative company, and while they're happy to use open source internally and on projects for their customers, this is their first experiment with actually running a project themselves. I think it's a big deal, not just for Lockheed Martin, but for large corporations who are considering a more open, more innovative approach to software development. And yet, Dana Blankenhorn hates it:

          Open source headlines from the Open Government plans

          The Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive ordered Federal agencies to produce open government plans by April 7th, and while some advocates are disappointed, we have before us a bewildering number of initiatives to improve transparency, collaboration, and participation across the Government. It will not surprise you to learn that I spent some time looking for places where open source is being used in these plans.

            Open source matters to open government. Really.

            “Open source and open government are not the same,” I’ve been reading recently. When discussing the role of open standards in open government transparency projects, Bob Caudill at Adobe, is concerned that open source and open standards are being conflated. He likes open standards just fine, but …

              Developers for Glory

              Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn’t be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem. Though they all offer cash prizes to the winners, they each took a slightly different approach, with different results.

                Software isn’t a skycraper

                Michael Daconta at Government Computer News has posted a brief call to arms for the software industry. Here’s the gist:

                Although I am a believer in free markets and the benefits of competition, industry has a responsibility to work together on the foundational layers to build security, quality and reliability from the ground up to advance the professionalism of the field. In essence, the information technology industry must emulate other engineering disciplines, or technological disasters and cybersecurity holes will worsen.

                  What the Open Government Directive Means for Open Source

                  On the heels of the Open Government Memo of January 21st, 2009, the Obama Administration has issued the Open Government Directive. The Directive tells agencies what they must do to meet the expectations set by the Memo. The directive names many deadlines for agency compliance, most of them around reducing FOIA backlogs and increasing the amount of agency data released to the public. This isn’t surprising, since the Memo names transparency, collaboration, and participation as the guiding principles. Transparency is the easiest to articulate and implement — just get the data out there in a useful form. Josh Tauberer’s Open Data is Civic Capital: Best Practices for “Open Government Data” is an excellent handbook for doing this. If you want to track agencies’ progress, the Sunlight Labs folks have produced the outstanding Open Watcher.