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Date:8 November 2021
Author:Jan Ainali

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Types of codebases to strategically steward

Last week we published the end-of-year goals for the codebase stewards as a result of our new roadmap. One of the goals was “Make a wish list of types of codebases we desire for direct stewardship” and comes from our notion that we instead if directly stewarding all the thousands of public codebases there is we should use a distributed model. Whilst doing that we still want to directly steward some key codebases. These would be the ones that become the standards in their respective public domains and that have the potential to be key global infrastructure.

So we thought we could start early and make a wish list of types of codebases we desire for direct stewardship. We have a few ideas, and now we want you to chime in. Our goal is to define some categories/types that we should pursue strategically. Below is a draft list, containing kinds of codebases we think will play a key role. As you see, there are still some open questions in it, so it is in no means a final version (you can think of it being version 0.1). Please do give feedback to us in this issue. Even if you just agree, please give it a thumbs up, but if you think we missed something or that something does not qualify, please leave a comment.

  • Legislation and policy making
    • Public budgeting
  • Participatory democracy
  • Border control / refugee support
  • Climate change
  • Public information / transparency
    • Algorithm registers
    • Open source software catalogs
    • Open Data portals
    • Something for public records / minutes / archive / freedom of information portal?
  • Residents and citizens
    • Digital identification
    • Civil registration and vital statistics
  • City nuisance reports
  • Something voting related?

In the list below, we are not as sure that we need to steward them all directly, but we also recognize that in many countries they do play a key role. Please also give us your thoughts about these.

  • Health
    • Health Information Systems
    • Medical Records Systems
  • Education
  • Social security
  • (Municipal) (front end) case management
  • Government focused Linux distribution?

Again, we publish this draft because we want your feedback. Please, give it here.