Official sees hurdles for 'open source' e-government

The lack of clear points of contact for conducting business with companies in the "open source" software industry has hampered the ability of that industry to grow effectively within the government, a former Pentagon official said on Thursday.

Certification and accreditation of open-source software, whose underlying code is open to inspection and alteration, is a "huge stumbling block" for the industry," Doug Maughan said during a Secure Trusted Operating System conference at George Washington University. He said because no single company owns open source, the open-source community has had a difficult time finding anyone to fund the certification and accreditation process.

Apple Computer is the exception, he said. It has taken steps to test and evaluate its product.

Maughan, who currently works at the nonprofit Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and formerly headed the open-source research project at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), argued that testing and evaluation is the "door to the procurement world," which in turn would help commercialize the product.

He said DARPA's project helped move open-source software into the government mainstream and improved assurances of the products, but research and development needs to continue. "It's not there yet," he said. "None of the open-source software is as good as it needs to be."

The problem is finding a place in government that will continue to fund the research, he added.

He said the federal government finds it difficult to use open-source software because it lacks a centralized clearinghouse, unlike proprietary software. "Today's model is not working -- at least in the government," Maughan said, adding that the government "is looking for a single -- or at most a few -- belly-buttons to push."

The open-source community must "congeal" in order to succeed, he advised. Maughan, who is working with the Homeland Security Department to organize its critical infrastructure and cyber-security research agenda, is hoping to join the department in 2004 to head cyber-security research under the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). He would like to use a small part of that agency's budget to fund open-source research, he said.