Are you entirely new to open source? Start with the basics ↗
All modern digital infrastructure is built on top of open source tools, maintained globally by developers serving the public good. Open information is a practice, a movement, and it's gaining traction on the international stage with the UN and some of the strongest city governments.
Terms that recur across UN Open Source Week and government open source programs.
Software whose source code anyone can inspect, use, modify, and share. It’s about freedom and public auditability, not price.
Why NYC should careA handful of NYC agencies already publish code on GitHub on their own initiative. Endorsement would turn that scattered habit into a citywide standard.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗Eight commitments adopted by the UN’s Digital and Technology Network in 2025 defining how the UN system approaches software.
Why NYC should careEndorsement is a signature plus a roadmap, not a procurement overhaul — the entry ticket to a global community of practice.
Learn more · unite.un.org ↗A small team that coordinates an institution’s open source strategy: what to use, what to publish, how to contribute, and how to stay secure doing it.
Why NYC should careParis, Munich, and the UN itself run OSPOs. NYC’s Office of Technology & Innovation is the natural home for one.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗The shared digital rails a society runs on — identity, payments, data exchange. Like roads or the power grid, it works best as interoperable public infrastructure, not walled gardens.
Why NYC should carePlatforms like Decidim and X-Road are built by one government and reused by dozens. NYC can join that exchange instead of buying its own silo.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗A government’s ability to control its own digital destiny — to run, audit, and change the systems it depends on rather than being locked into any single vendor.
Why NYC should careEvery proprietary contract renewal NYC can’t walk away from is a sovereignty question. Open source is the strongest structural answer.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗Publicly documented formats and protocols that let systems from different makers work together — the difference between an ecosystem and a lock-in.
Why NYC should careWriting open standards into procurement is the single highest-leverage clause NYC’s buyers control.
Learn more · Wikipedia ↗The principle that software paid for by the public should be available to the public as open source — adopted as policy by cities like Munich.
Why NYC should careA slogan NYC’s civic tech community already believes in; endorsement would make it official posture.
Learn more · FSFE ↗Adopted by the UN’s Digital and Technology Network in 2025, these eight commitments define what it means for an institution to build software openly and support those doing it.
View as PDF ↗Primarily, this means that software built for the city ought to be:
Making the use of open source software components to build city solutions the standard and default approach to creating software.
There are very few scenarios when open source isn’t appropriate, and vendors ought to justify why their solutions should be closed, not the other way around.
As leaders in the global open source movement, we are committed to the following:
Making security a priority in all software projects.
Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems.
Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers.
Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions.
Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate.
Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem.
Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.
The Digital Public Goods Alliance starts vetting open source solutions for the SDGs, the Secretary-General’s digital cooperation roadmap names digital public goods as essential, and "OSPOs for Good" convenes governments at UN Headquarters.
At the Summit of the Future, member states commit to shared principles for an open, safe digital future — with explicit support for digital public goods and infrastructure.
The UN’s Digital and Technology Network adopts eight principles — "open by default," "contribute back," and more. Seventeen organizations endorse, from the Open Source Initiative to the Linux Foundation.
Barcelona becomes the first city in the world to endorse the Principles, pairing the signature with an OSPO, a citizen agreement, and a municipal open source fund.
UN Open Source Week fills UN Headquarters with themed days on AI, digital public infrastructure, and OSPOs — the movement’s annual gathering, in New York.
In November 2025, Barcelona became the first city in the world to formally endorse the UN Open Source Principles. New York hosts the movement every June but hasn’t joined it yet. Following Barcelona’s lead would make New York the first city in the Americas to do the same.
Government open source programs on this map are drawn from the Civic Tech Field Guide — 62 open source programs built by public bodies across 24 countries. Each dot links to its full profile. Data licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; snapshot taken 2026-08-07.
This map is illustrative. For the full global picture, explore the DPI Map (UCL IIPP) — click any of 210 countries to see the digital ID, payment, and data-exchange systems it runs.
The Open Source Initiative endorsed first; sixteen more organizations — foundations, industry, and public agencies — joined in March 2025.
Now that you know the basics —
Why does this matter to NYC? →