Johan Linåker
Senior Researcher, RISE Research Institute of Sweden

What constitutes a more open sense of community in the levels of municipality, city, or even regional and international digitally? Are we giving away our sovereignty and agency in regards to who can currently design our society’s digital infrastructure? What would a collaborative and open solution to common problems developed by multiple actors in the society look like? Does everyone have an equal right to contribute based on your needs and values?

In this talk, the senior researcher of RISE, Johan Linåker, opens up the endless possibilities of implementing the collaboratively developed nature of open-source in the public sector, especially for municipalities. With its already popular use in verticals across multiple industries, Linåker feels it is imminent for it to be incorporated within the public sector system as well. Using existing variety of examples in municipalities and cities across Europe, he takes us on a journey to illustrate in what ways can this collaboration take shape.

Having researched on how both the private and public sector can collaborate, he’s also of the belief that open-source can allow municipalities to interconnect and be a part of the many levels of the digital infrastructure. One of the main issues, according to him, is that the public sector is locked in on existing vendors and platforms, not to mention the reluctance of encountering something that is new and ‘open’. How can we change that? The future might demand it.