Take Action

New York City Should Endorse the UN Open Source Principles

To
The NYC Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation and the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs
From
WeGovNYC / Sarapis, and the undersigned
Re
Formally endorsing the United Nations Open Source Principles — and making New York the first city in the Americas to do so

Dear Chief Technology Officer and Commissioner for International Affairs,

Every June, the United Nations convenes UN Open Source Week at its Headquarters — here, in New York City. In 2026 it drew more than 2,600 participants from over 120 countries. New York provides the stage on which the world’s open source movement gathers; it has not yet joined that movement.

We are writing to ask you to change that: to formally endorse the UN Open Source Principles, making New York the first city in the Americas to align its digital governance with the standard the UN itself has set.

The precedent is already set

In November 2025, Barcelona became the first city in the world to endorse the Principles — a decision sparked by attending UN Open Source Week. It was not a procurement overhaul. It was a signature paired with three commitments:

  • A Citizen Agreement for Democratic Technologies and Digital Rights.
  • An Open Source Programme Office (OSPO), modeled on those in Paris and Munich.
  • A municipal fund for open source digital innovation. The move cost Barcelona little and signaled a great deal: that a city can commit, publicly and concretely, to building and sharing technology as a public good.

New York is ready — and has a habit of being first

  • First U.S. city to submit a Voluntary Local Review of its Sustainable Development Goal progress to the UN (2018).
  • First U.S. city to join the UN’s Safe Cities Global Initiative.
  • An Open Data Law since 2012, one of the strongest in the nation, with city code already published on GitHub.
  • An Office of Technology & Innovation positioned to house an NYC OSPO. Endorsing the Principles formalizes values the City already professes, and gives its technologists a shared, internationally recognized framework.

The eight principles

The UN Open Source Principles — endorsed in March 2025 by seventeen organizations, from the Open Source Initiative to the Linux Foundation — are:

  1. Open by default — open source as the standard approach for projects.
  2. Contribute back — active participation in the open source ecosystem.
  3. Secure by design — security as a priority in all software projects.
  4. Foster inclusive participation and community building — inclusive participation and community building.
  5. Design for reusability — interoperable across platforms and contexts.
  6. Provide documentation — thorough documentation for end users.
  7. RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower) — recognize, incentivize, support, and empower communities.
  8. Sustain and scale — solutions that meet evolving needs over time.

The ask

We respectfully call on the Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation, together with the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, to:

  • Formally endorse the UN Open Source Principles, publicly and by name.
  • Announce a light-touch roadmap in the spirit of Barcelona’s, beginning with a commitment to explore an NYC Open Source Programme Office within OTI.
  • Do so before or during UN Open Source Week, so the city that hosts the world’s open source community can welcome it as a member. New York does not need to reinvent the model. It needs only to sign — and to lead the Americas in doing so.

Respectfully, WeGovNYC / Sarapis, and the undersigned