Open First Whitepaper

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has written this whitepaper to pull together our thinking on how to shift government to an “Open” approach. This paper will unpack and get into the details on the subject of “Open” in order to inform a few initiatives, including the new Enterprise Architecture Review Board (EARB) in setting standards (open standards, open source software (OSS)) that would influence our technological ecosystem as well as our Information Management - Information Technology (IM-IT) practices. Hopefully, this whitepaper will lead to a number of strategic changes to the Government of Canada (GC) approach, including an IM-IT digital strategy that favours the use of open standards as well as OSS and that this would be a central part of the GC digital policy. It’s not just open standards and OSS, we’re also including open source code, open market and open culture.

This whitepaper was co-developed by many members of the GC open source community in an effort to get the full-picture of open in the GC. Once we can better understand our use of open tools, programs and activities, we can find new ways to work, build and provide services. While we have made a first attempt at gathering information, including best practices and jurisdictional case studies, there is still a lot more that can be contributed in order to make this document complete. If you have something to add, we would encourage you to contribute your thoughts, expertise and references.

We want to learn as much as possible from Canadians, our partners, academics and technical experts to help us update GC policies, governance, funding and processes with an open lens.