NASA, State Department and Veteran Affairs Innovation Initiative Host Open Source Summit

Registration for the second Open Source Summit, hosted by NASA, the U.S. State Department and the Veteran Affairs Innovation Initiative to advance the use of open source software in government, is under way. The event will be held June 20-21 at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The summit will convene leaders from government and industry as well as software practitioners to discuss the development, release and use of open source software, which is characterized by a collaborative development process and free user access.

Discussion topics will include the current and future state of the government open source community, how-to insights for open source projects in government, real-world projects and their successes and challenges, and government procurement of open source software.

As the role of open source in government expands and matures, the relationship between technology, policy and culture will be increasingly important. Open source brings numerous benefits to government software projects, including increased software quality, reduced development costs, faster development cycles and reduced barriers to public-private collaboration through new opportunities to commercialize technology. This inherently transparent, participatory, and collaborative approach is revolutionizing the way software is created, improved and used.

The event will be facilitated by Wayne Moses Burke of the Open Forum Foundation and will provide high energy, relevant speakers to educate the participants interspersed with deep discussions to ensure that everyone gets questions answered and information that is directly relevant to their interests and needs.

Speakers

• Jason Hoekstra, Dept of Education
• Chris Mattmann, Ph.D., Senior Computer Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Chris Musialek, GSA
• Gray Brooks, FCC
• Jim Jagielski, Apache Software Foundation
• Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse Foundation
• Mike O’Neill, Veteran’s Administration (OSEHRA)
• Tina Coleman, DISA
• Deborah Bryant

For more information and to register, visit:
http://open.nasa.gov/summit

- end -