open source project openjustitia of the federal supreme court of switzerland

Open Source Project OpenJustitia of the Federal Supreme Court of SwitzerlandEuropean Commission Workshop„European Public Administrations and Open Source Sofware: The Power of Communities”

Open Source World ConferenceJanuary 12, 2012 in Granada, Spain

Open Source Project OpenJustitia of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland 2

Short Bio of Matthias Stürmer

Matthias Stürmer studied business administration and computer science at University of Bern until 2005. The topic of his licenciate was open source community building.

In 2009 he finished his doctoral dissertation at the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation at ETH Zürich. His research focused on open source communities and firm involvement, the title of his PhD thesis was "How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation".

He then worked for one year at the Swiss software company Liip creating agile Internet solutions based on open source technologies.

Since 2010 he is Senior Advisor at Ernst & Young specialised on open source, open government, and social media.

Matthias Stürmer is member of the board of Swiss Open System User Group /ch/open, secretary of the Swiss Parliamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability, leader of www.opensource.ch and co-founder of the open data initiative opendata.ch.

Since 2010 he is member of the city parliament of Bern.

Dr. Matthias StürmerSenior Advisor

Ernst & YoungBelpstrasse 233001 BernSwitzerland

[email protected]: +41 58 286 61 97Mobile: +41 58 289 61 97


Agenda

Open Source Project OpenJustitia of the Federal Supreme Courtof Switzerland

1. Introduction

2. Community structure and governance

3. Competitive dynamics and the role of politics

4. Open source related initiatives by Ernst & Young


The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland

Highest court in Switzerland based in Lausanne and Lucerne

Around 7500 judgements annually in German, French, and Italian

Follows open standards (2001) and open source (2009) strategy:Use, publish, and maintain open source software

400 thin client users (judges, staff etc.) on Sun OpenSolaris Since 2002 StarOffice, since 2010 OpenOffice, everything on ODF


About OpenJustitia

Internal court decision administration system for management of all documents related to a court judgement

165'000 court decisions since 1954, 332'000 stored documents, 55'000 documents semantically indexed (manually)

OpenJustitia consists of several modules:● OpenJustitia Doc: management and search of legal documents● OpenJustitia Ldoc: local search of legal documents● OpenJustitia Norm: automatic and semi-automatic recognition of legal

norms within court judgements● OpenJustitia Anom: semi-automatic anonymisation of judgements● OpenJustitia Bib: search in legal literature● OpenJustitia Spider: integration of external legal data sources


Open source stack of OpenJustitia

All source code in Java J2EE, running on Apache Tomcat Open source DMS Alfresco for document management Apache Lucene for indexing and search engine PostgreSQL for data storage (index, legal norms etc.) Java macros for OpenOffice integration on the client External interfaces for Java/JDBC (for metadata) and XML

(for import/export of judgements, legal norms, thesaurus...)


Screenshot of OpenJustitia


History of OpenJustitia

1. No available Swiss court software met the Federal Court's requirements for managing court decisions

2. Internal software development team programmed the Federal Court's individual administration system

3. Federal Court decided to 'open source' its own software following its open source intentions within the IT strategy

4. Minor technical and governance preparations were necessary to initiate the open source project OpenJustitia

5. Political troubles (see later)

6. Release of the source code on September 1, 2011 below GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3)


Reasons to release as open source

Why did the Federal Court initiate OpenJustitia?

1. Benefitting the most of tax payer's money● Switzerland has dozens of national, cantonal, and regional

courts that all have similar technical needs for administrating court judgements.

● Federal open source strategy as well as the Federal E-Government strategy both recommend collaborative software development at institutional level in order to save costs.

2. Improve court management software● On the long term and through a healthy community OpenJustitia

will become more stable, secure and feature-rich.


Agenda


1. Introduction

2.Community structure and governance




Website www.openjustitia.org


Open source community guidelines

From the Federal Court, only 6 pages Common understanding on what is

OpenJustitia and who can how inwhich body participate.

Content of the community guidelines: Introduction (background, goals etc.) Principles of the OpenJustitia community Intended members of the community Bodies of the OpenJustitia community Rules and procedures

Source: http://www.openjustitia.org/DE/01_OpenJustitia_Regeln_V1.2_d.pdf


Community principles of OpenJustitia

Basic principles and values the Federal Court intends to adhere to within the OpenJustitia community and expects the same of any other community member:

1. Equality: Every one (court, company etc.) is treated the same

2. Transparency: Communication happens as open as possible

3. Meritocracy: For the moment Federal Court is in control. But if others contribute more, then they may also gain influence on the projects future development.


Intended members of the community

Federal Court: initiator and thus main knowledge carrier at the moment

Courts: all Swiss courts, but also foreign courts feasible

Other public institutions: using all or parts of OpenJustitia

Open source providers: software firms that offer services for OpenJustitia

Other firms: companies that may benefit of the software, e.g. legal firms

Universities: law schools for indexing and researching legal texts


Bodies of the OpenJustitia community

Members: free membership for any legal entity (public institution, company, association etc.) that uses OpenJustitia or provides services for it

Coordination committee: executives of entities that use OpenJustitia in mission-critical environment; Federal Court directs the committee and has two seats of a maximum of 5 seats

Technology committee: software developers or architects with in-depth knowledge of the source code; is responsible for all technical aspects


Rules and procedures

Annual assembly: OpenJustitia community members meet at least once a year to receive annual report and to do elections.

Exclusion: If a community member doesn't follow the guidelines, the coordination committee can exclude the member.

Introductory support: Federal Court offers support of 5 days to the 5 five first members


Community membership

Formal participation through writtendeclaration of enrollment

Member accepts following requirements:1. Interest in healthy progress of OpenJustitia2. Participation at the general assembly3. Accepts governance guidelines4. Written withdrawal at resignation5. Exclusion through majority vote of the

coordination committee if governanceguidelines are breached

Source: http://www.openjustitia.org/DE/02_OpenJustitia_Beitrittserklaerung_V1.2_d.pdf


Agenda


1. Introduction


3.Competitive dynamics and the role of politics



Reactions from the press


Accusations by the press

„Dumping of prizes“ „Cross-subsidization thus missuse of tax money“ „Commercial services by public institution“ „Oversized IT department of Federal Court“ „Federal Court as public software provider“ „Market-distorting practices of the Federal Court“


Political and media lobbying

What had happened? There are several proprietary Swiss court software vendors Some expected OpenJustitia positively, one opponed heavily This software vendor contacted a member of the parliament Member of the parliament planned intervention through

governance commission of the Federal Court Software vendor informed major newspapers Newspapers reported negatively about OpenJustitia Members of the Parliamentarian Group for Digital

Sustainability supported intentions of OpenJustitia Governance commission finally didn't stop the Federal Court

to release OpenJustitia


Answers by the Federal Court

Equal rights: every company can offer commercial services for OpenJustitia, the Federal Court only supports in the beginning

Legal situation: there is no law that forbids public institutions to release open source software

Commercial competition: Federal Court doesn't sell the source code, but gives it out for free

Liabilty: Federal Court is not liable for the GPLv3-software, that is the job of private firms

Source:http://www.bger.ch/antworten_fragen_gpk_de.pdf


Core members of theParliamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability

Christian WasserfallenMember of the National Council

Edith Graf-LitscherMember of the National Council

Balthasar GlättliMember of the National Council

Thomas WeibelMember of the National Council

Co-presidents

Kathy RiklinMember of the National Council

Core team

Website of the parliamentarian group:

www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch

http://www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch/


Members of the Parliamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability – total 15% of parliament

Alec von GraffenriedBarbara Schmid-FedererBrigitte Häberli-KollerCarlo SommarugaCédric WermuthClaude JaniakEvi AllemannFelix GutzwillerFrancine John-CalameFranziska TeuscherGeri MüllerHans AltherrHugues HiltpoldIgnazio CassisJacqueline BadranKathrin BertschyLiliane Maury PasquierLouis SchelbertLuc RecordonLukas ReimannMaja IngoldMaria Roth-BernasconiMarianne Streiff-FellerMatthias AebischerPeter MalamaPhilipp HadornRaphaël ComteSylvia Flückiger-BäniThomas AeschiYvonne Gilli


Outlook OpenJustitia

Growing member base: today seven firms and public institutions have become OpenJustitia members

First member meeting in 2012: initiation of technical and leading boards, decision on how to progress

Technical improvements: integrate OpenJustitia in public website, optimization of automatic recognition, enhance documentation, integration of business process software for court decisions, possibly Italian and English translation


Vision for promoting open source

Incentive system for government agencies to release proprietary software below open source licenses:

Liberos, the currency for Digital Sustainability Non-monetary award for public institutions; quantification for

sharing digital assets, some sort of 'openness Karma' Could also be used to honor open government data releases

Source: http://www.freefoto.com/preview/901-23-8908/Coins


Agenda


1. Introduction



4.Open source related initiatives by Ernst & Young


Ernst & Young open source brochure

Open source has one major weakness: marketing and PR Top management vendor-neutral brochure from Ernst & Young:

Why and how professionals use open source software Content:

● Benefits, risks and good practices● Professional application of

open source software● Legal aspects of open source● Background information on

open source software

Download as PDF onErnst & Young website

http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Open_Source_Software_in_business_critical_environments/$FILE/Open_Source_Software_EN.pdf


Project to improve OOXML supportin LibreOffice/OpenOffice

Public institutions

City of Freiburg i.B. City of München City of Jena Swiss Federal Court Federal Strategy Unit for IT (ISB) Another Swiss federal agency Canton of Vaud

Project organization

Coordination through new Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) Working Group „Office Interoperability“

Public tender available on OSBA website Open for offers by open source firms until

January 31, 2012 Additional public institutions welcome!

Work packages within the specification1. Formatting of frames and images in .docx2. Formatting of tables in .docx3. Formatting of lists in .docx4. Formatting of comments in .docx and .xlsx5. Embedding of fonts in OOXML and ODF

http://www.osb-alliance.com/index.php/de/home/5-lisog/622-authorities-publish-specification-for-better-support-of-ooxml-in-libreofficeopenofficeorg-new-qoffice-interoperabilityq-working-group-within-osb-alliance-to-coordinate-implementation


Open source strategy development

Reasons for an open source strategy: to benefit of the potential of open source software and to manage the involved risks

Open source strategy spider: 8 typical elements of an open source strategy (next to descriptive sections of the strategy)

Important: implementation of the open source strategy through defined actions

Open source strategy workshops moderated by Ernst & Young


Open source compliance scan

In-depth analysis of proprietary software code in order to check compliance with open source licenses

Black Duck Knowledge Base contains versioned source code of >560'000 open source projects linked to >2000 software licenses

Pilot project with Black Duck in February 2012 at a client


Swiss open source study 2012

Analysis of diffusion of open source: Who uses which open source technologies, why, with which benefit, why not etc.?

Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open and SwissICT

Start in March 2012, publication of results in October 2012

Additionally reports, case studies, best practices etc. to make use of open source software more known.

Call for Participation: http://www.swissict.ch/fileadmin/sekretariat/Info/2012_OSS_Studie_Call_for_Participation.pdf


Swiss IT procurement conference

Conference on public IT procurementin Fall 2012 in Bern

Organized by● Swiss Federal Government● Cantonal IT Leaders● SwissICT● Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open

Target Audience● IT procurement professionals● IT vendors● Lawyers and consultants in procurement


Thank you for your attention!

Questions, comments, wishes?

Contact us anytime:

Dr. Matthias StürmerSenior Advisor Ernst & Young

[email protected]: +41 58 286 61 97

Mobile: +41 58 289 61 97