Management

A core mission of homeland security is to get actionable information to public safety agencies - information the agencies can actually act on. Essential information is everywhere, but it isn't always easily identified, collected or understood. In order to make information actionable, it first has to be acquired, managed, made sense of, shared with those who need it, and both it and the infrastructure needed to share it have to be secured. For various reasons the public safety community has had difficulty accomplishing many of these essential tasks.more...

Mr. Wennergren will talk about the need to deliver capabilities faster to the warfighter and how open source software can help the military meet its missions and goals. He will discuss the recently released DoD 2009 OSS Guidance memo and hope to clear up some of the more common misconceptions of using OSS in the federal government and the military.more...

Hear from two recognized experts in the field of collaborative software development internal to a government agency. Why is collaboration and participation important to the advancement of government information systems, and how does the playing field change when you start collaborating with individuals external to the agency?

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Various open source licenses make requirements on the developer using the licensed code to re-release their modifications back to the community for the benefit of others.  How does this affect open source development of Government programs?  What are the different licenses and associated restrictions? This session will deal with legal issues faced by agencies when developing open source software and then releasing it back to the community  - both to other agencies and to the general public.

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Terms, Conditions, and Licensing.  Any experienced government official understands that navigating these stormy waters can easily prevent an agency from procuring the most qualified or best fit technology for a project.  Bryan Geurts is an expert in this realm; he'll talk about his work at NASA designing the first open source license for use in a federal agency and other myriad successes ensuring that licensing pitfalls didn't become stumbling blocks for his agency's mission success.

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Learn from experience.  Hear from these two distinguished speakers on how to navigate the government procurement process when it comes to open source software.  Understand why it's imperative that open source be written into the procurement language, and the unique role the open source development model plays in commoditizing security requirements for government projects thus controlling cost.

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In this interview-style session, you will hear Bill Vass talk with Vish Sankaran about the role open source software has played as part of the strategy for the National Health Information Network (NHIN) as well as their respective views on agency opportunities and challenges.

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Keith Bergelt is the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network (OIN), the collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux. more...

The more you rely upon open source software, the more critical it becomes to understand how that software is supported.  Panelists will discuss the open source model, and how commercial software entities provide support to software produced in that model.

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One of the more controversial topics in the world of OSS is the "total cost of ownership:" debate. Unfortunately, studies on both sides of the argument are often self-funded by the parties seeking to support their position. This talk attempts to cut through the signal-to-noise distortion and present some essential guidelines to determine the "TCO" of open source software technology compared to traditional proprietary commercial software products.

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