When governments screw up, why not let the public fix it?

As the COVID-19 crisis grew, the government retreated from the promise of open source software. It should instead be pushing OSS as the digital solution to many pandemic woes.

Mar 08, 2021

Ricardo Chejfec (RC) is a graduate student at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. With a background in research and technology, Ricardo is interested in exploring the role of emerging technologies in governance, wellbeing, and public life. Write us at newsletterthebell@gmail.com

IN POST-ELECTION BRIEFING NOTES RELEASED IN EARLY FEBRUARY, prime minister Justin Trudeau was warned that federal IT infrastructure was at risk of “critical failure,” with some of the aging and obsolete systems entering their sixth decade of service. Of course, updated technology is not necessarily a comfort – many Canadians will remember the pain and trouble that accompanied the last big government effort to upgrade the outdated Phoenix payment system. Contemplating the millions of dollars wasted and chaos generated during the lengthy process to fix it, people are right to be worried. A wide and deep digital infrastructure supports most, if not all, government services, and as Canada prepares to vaccinate 100% of its population by the end of the year, we will see this infrastructure tested again and again.

Less than two weeks ago, we got a first glimpse at what these challenges will look like. As the Ontario and B.C. governments received criticism for announcing the late roll-out of their vaccine scheduling websites, Alberta – seemingly miscalculating public interest for the vaccine – had too many visitors and experienced major disruptions. Luckily for many Albertans, a trio of brothers from Edmonton came together to identify the problem and backwards-engineer a solution, which they quickly spread on Twitter. Completely unaffiliated with the provincial government, and lacking any special access to the inner workings of the site, they managed to book vaccine appointments for their grandparents (and presumably many others) within a matter of hours.

Alas, not all incoming problems will be conducive to similar solutions, but it does force us to imagine what thousands of willing and capable coders could do if they were explicitly invited to collaborate in the digital solutions of the COVID-19 recovery and beyond.

What I’m suggesting is known as open-source software (OSS). Whereas most of the code of software we interact with daily is hidden behind intellectual property licenses, OSS works under the idea that the source code (the instructions that make up the mechanisms of digital tools) is made freely available for people to improve, modify, or even redistribute. Its development happens all in the open, in platforms like GitHub or GitLab, where a governing body manages a list of improvements or errors to which unaffiliated users with varying levels of skill and experience can contribute.

OSS is not a new idea — it's been around roughly as long as software — but has seen a recent boom in popularity. Several misconceptions have likely led to a slow embrace of open-source technologies by governments. In short, governments believe that by making its source code freely and readily available, OSS is inherently unsafe and unprofitable. These present a problem because of the confidential and relevant nature of the information governments work with, and fears from the private sector that investments in OSS would do little to stimulate the economy.

Though these are seemingly reasonable worries, the last 50 years have shown evidence to the contrary. Cyber-security and technology experts overwhelmingly prefer OSS and many companies have found profitable models, since customers are generally willing to pay for the ongoing development and support of the tool.

Moreover, OSS is growing everywhere we look. Open-source internet browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chromium), operating systems (Linux), even password managers (Bitwarden) lead surveys in security and consumer preference and many open-source companies have reached multi-billion dollar valuations. In fact, a surprisingly large portion of the internet relies on open source technologies, and contrary to what one would expect, it is tech giants, like Microsoft and Facebook – which built their empires on proprietary software – that now lead some of the biggest ongoing open source projects.

This is not to say governments have completely fallen behind. Brazil and several European municipalities have migrated all of their Windows computers to Linux, an open source competitor. The United States adopted a Federal Source Code Policy ensuring that a percentage of all code developed by or for the federal government remains open to the public. And Canada has had a mandate since 2018, directing federal departments to use OSS when possible, with notable outcomes. These include a Government of Canada Github Account, an open governance website where departments can share code, policies, or process management techniques with each other, and an open COVID-19 resources portal (that at the time of publication displayed only seven projects).

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened the perfect window of opportunity to begin an explicit and significant investment in OSS that seems to be slipping away from the government’s grasp. While Canada has made some modest headway internally, it is hard to pinpoint ways in which it has impacted the lives of its citizens and as COVID-19 cases ballooned into fall 2020, we have seen most of these OSS efforts halted.

Take for example the COVID-19 Alert App, released by the Government of Canada in mid 2020. The app's development was available on GitHub for interested contributors to review and test and at its launch, it received praise for the speed and quality of its development, as well as how it handled security and privacy issues. Seven months later, as the government gets ready to begin evaluating the app’s effectiveness, several provinces have still not adopted it for wide use, and official government communications have slowed down so much that it's barely even mentioned in the media. Given the app's initial praise, one is forced to consider what could have happened if the government had doubled down on the app. It would certainly have improved the app’s chances for success, but it would likely have also persuaded some provinces and territories to integrate open source frameworks into their COVID-19 digital solutions.

While all Canadian policy makers ought to investigate the advantages of embracing an open-source approach to their digital solutions, especially as it pertains to pandemic recovery, prime minister Trudeau has a unique opportunity to harness the interest of the public towards recovering from this national crisis as quickly as possible. OSS provides the means to accelerate and improve the government’s response. The case from the Alberta trio certainly seems to indicate that there is a public interest in vetting and improving the tools that are used to manage our government’s services.

Embracing an open-source approach would not only increase the participatory nature of governance, but allow governments to produce safe and efficient tools in a fraction of the time while also making them less likely to fail. Maybe then we’ll begin to regain trust in the government’s capacity to develop digital solutions. (RC)

When governments screw up, why not let the public fix it?

As the COVID-19 crisis grew, the government retreated from the promise of open source software. It should instead be pushing OSS as the digital solution to many pandemic woes.

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