Un ejemplo del valor del código, estándares y acceso abiertos en proyectos públicos: monitorización de la contaminación atmosférica en California

En Worldchanging: comentan un magnífico ejemplo de la utilidad del uso de software de código abierto, de los estándares abiertos y  del acceso abierto a contenidos en el caso de proyectos de administraciones públicas:

The Mad Penguin has an excellent interview with the information technology team at California's Air Resources Board (ARB), which has the primary responsibility in California for handling air pollution. The focus of the interview is the widespread adoption of free/open source software (FOSS) in the ARB computer network, but it seems to me the important lesson coming from this conversation is the close relationship between the FOSS philosophies and organizational transparency.

Although there's lots of talk about Linux distributions and the uses of PHP, read between the lines: this is an organization that has clearly learned the value of collaboration, transparent discourse, and open access to historical records.

Después de las razones de rentabilidad económica que la NASA ha descubierto, aquí surgen razones organizativas y de servicio público para defender el open source como filosofía de trabajo en proyectos públicos. Os dejo con la primera pregunta:

Mad Penguin:  Why is ARB using open source software?

Bill Welty: If you are looking for a word or a phrase that is a backdrop for ARB's success with open source software, it would have to be that ARB runs on collaboration as a philosophy of governance. From the Chairman's office all the way to the support staff, it's a very flat organizational structure. The rule- making process, as well as the IT program, is all based on collaboration. In light of the collaborative nature of our organization, it was a very natural thing to go to the Internet for software and to put our faith in those open source products we adopted. It did not strike us that this was a wild leap, because collaboration is part of our culture.

Narcisco Gonzalez: My biggest fear is that you get locked in with the proprietary solutions. We do a lot of research here. We collect, compile and process a lot of data, and we report it. That's really what we do. That's our business. We generate regulations to control air pollution, and the whole process of developing regulations is open. We need to keep that information available to the public we regulate. We don’t want to require a group we regulate to have to buy proprietary software to read how we developed the regulations.