For all the talk of “open data” and “open government,” there are very few centralized resources that help provide folks with a one stop shop for finding information about these resources and entities.
But all of that may change thanks to the efforts of some Portland folks. Introducing GovHub, a new site for open source and open government collaboration.
Started by a trio from Portland, Oregon’s tri-county regional government Metro—Greg Lind, a web based software developer and architect from Metro; John Miller, formerly of Lewis and Clark College and Metro; and Jarhid Brown, from Metro and formerly the Department of Defense—the service hopes to solve some of the problems ailing the open collaboration space.
What exactly are they proposing? Well, long story short, “GovHub is a non-profit entity with the goal of providing government agencies, non-profits and developers a place to collaborate on open source software.”
And they’ve got two particular things they’re trying to accomplish.
- Provide clear and easy paths for non-profit and government agencies to adopt open source technologies as well as share and create there own open source software contributions.
- Provide a place for developers and public agencies to work together and support each other via idea exchanges, open data initiatives and the creation of open source software that will help solve public data access problems as well drive down the overall cost of doing business for government.
Not a bad idea at all.
And it seems only appropriate that Portland—the de facto hub of open source and a self-proclaimed open city—would be the spot to launch this effort.
The site, launched at IgniteGov, is still very much in its formative stages. But given the government experience of its founders—especially government experience that involves getting three counties and city government to cooperate—it shows promise.
For more information, visit GovHub or follow @govhub on Twitter.
