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Create article for BRP

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carmenbianca 2017-12-04 13:22:51 +01:00
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html newsdate="2017-12-05">
<head>
<title>Dutch government publishes large project as Free Software</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Dutch government publishes large project as Free Software</h1>
<p newsteaser="yes">
This Wednesday, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
released the source code and documentation of Basisregistratie Personen (BRP),
an IT system that contains information about inhabitants within the
Netherlands. This comes as a great victory for Public Code.
<p>
<p>Operation BRP is an IT project by the Dutch government that has been in the
works since 2010. It has cost Dutch taxpayers upwards of 100 million Euros and
has endured three failed attempts at revival, without anything to show for
it. From the outside, it was unclear what exactly was costing taxpayers so much
money with very little information to go on. After the plug had been pulled from
the project earlier this year in July, the former interior minister agreed to
finally open up about the project and release the source code to the public as
Free Software in the project's post-mortem.</p>
<p>In 2013, when the first smoke signals showed, the minister initially wanted
to address concerns about the project by providing limited parts of the source
code to a limited amount of people under certain restrictive conditions. The
ministry has since made a complete about-face,
releasing <a href="https://github.com/MinBZK/OperatieBRP">a snapshot of the full
source code and documentation</a> under the terms of the GNU Affero General
Public License, with the development history soon to follow.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/brieven/2017/11/10/afschrift-brief-over-openbaarmaking-broncode-brp">a
letter to Dutch municipalities</a> earlier this month, secretary of state Knops
said that he is convinced of the need of an even playing field for all parties,
and that he intends to &quot;let the publication happen under open source
terms&quot;. He went on to say: &quot;What has been realised in operation BRP
has namely been financed with public funds. Software that is built on top of
this source code should in turn be available to the public again.&quot;</p>
<p>These statements are an echo of our <a href="https://publiccode.eu/">Public
Money, Public Code</a> campaign, in which we implore public administrations to
release software funded by the public as Free Software available to the
citizenry that paid for it.</p>
<p>The echoes of 'Public Money, Public Code' do not stop
there. In <a href="https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/kamerstukken/2017/11/29/kamerbrief-over-openbaarmaking-meest-recente-versie-broncode-brp">a
letter to the Dutch parliament</a> this Wednesday, the secretary of state writes
about the AGPL: &quot;The license terms assure that changes to the source code
are also made publicly available. In this way, reuse is further supported. The
AGPL offers the best guarantee for this, and besides the GPL (General Public
License), sees a lot of use and support in the open source community.</p>
<p>&quot;Publication will happen free of charge so that, in the public interest,
an even playing field is created for everyone who wants to reuse this
code.&quot;</p>
<p>This is big news from the Netherlands and an unprecedented move of
transparency by the Dutch
government. Following <a href="https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2017/10/11/onderzoek-open-source-software">a
report</a> to the Ministry of the Interior about publishing government software
as Open Source Software, it seems that this will happen more often. In it, Open
Source Software is described as making the government more transparent, lowering
costs, increasing innovation, forming the foundation for a digital participation
society, and increasing the quality of code.</p>
</body>
<tags>
<tag>front-page</tag>
<tag>Public Money Public Code</tag>
</tags>
<author id="carmenbianca" />
</html>