How to procure open source (you don't)
E143 | Sat 15 Jul 11:30 a.m.–noon
Presented by
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Anne-Marie Scott
@ammienoot
https://ammienoot.com/
Anne-Marie Scott was Deputy Provost of Athabasca University, Canada's equivalent to the UK Open University until March 2023. Prior to her time in Canada she held a number of roles at the University of Edinburgh, including Deputy Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services
She is the Board Chair of the Apereo Software Foundation and a member of the Board of the Open Source Initiative, who globally steward the license definitions for open source software. She has been part of the Government of British Columbia’s Digital Advisory Committee since 2022, advising on how to embed and upscale digital learning across the province. She is a member of the After Surveillance network, a global group of scholars and practitioners concerned with surveillance practices in HE, part of the leadership team of the OpenETC, a shared set of open technologies for post-secondary institutions within British Columbia Canada, run along platform cooperative principles.
As a practitioner and leader she is committed to sharing openly her blog, along with presentations and publications. You can find her online at @ammienoot (Twittter) @ammienoot@ds106.social.us (Mastodon) and https://ammienoot.com
Anne-Marie Scott
@ammienoot
https://ammienoot.com/
Abstract
A common complaint in higher education has been that departments would consider open source options when purchasing software, but nobody ever bids into the formal procurement processes that public sector bodies are obliged to run. This response makes clear a fundamental mis-conception about how to approach the acquisition of open source; a competitive procurement process is in most cases inappropriate because no product purchase is being made. Instead a different kind of commitment of time and resources is required to adopt open source, and to facilitate decision making about that, a different kind of evaluation process is also required.
This talk will outline the kinds of evalution processes that should be used by higher education to acquire open source solutions, and how such processes can actively enhance commercial procurement practices if that is the eventual route taken. It will also cover what kinds of information open source projects should be providing to enable easy options evaluation and decision making.
A common complaint in higher education has been that departments would consider open source options when purchasing software, but nobody ever bids into the formal procurement processes that public sector bodies are obliged to run. This response makes clear a fundamental mis-conception about how to approach the acquisition of open source; a competitive procurement process is in most cases inappropriate because no product purchase is being made. Instead a different kind of commitment of time and resources is required to adopt open source, and to facilitate decision making about that, a different kind of evaluation process is also required. This talk will outline the kinds of evalution processes that should be used by higher education to acquire open source solutions, and how such processes can actively enhance commercial procurement practices if that is the eventual route taken. It will also cover what kinds of information open source projects should be providing to enable easy options evaluation and decision making.