CS CY - From Open Knowledge to Public Code: Building Cyprus’ FOSS Capacity for Digital Sovereignty

So far um across Europe is becoming uh very very quickly a best citizen in the discussion of um digital soarity, public sector resilience and digital uh public infrastructure. Um I think for cyers the important question is not so much in terms of whether open source matters. We know that it does but to see what it means in practice for our country and this panel will be focusing a bit more on that. Um so as we saw already we we have the technical experts we have the civil communities we have universities research organizations all active in the open ecosystem here in Cyprus. I think our challenge here is that we are a bit scattered. So we need to bring those people together and start doing things together. Um so today we'll try to surface let's say the cypress reality the siod context uh connect it to the lessons learned from the European ecosystems and hopefully come up with some suggestions on what a realistic what a realistic next step could be for us um and what it would look like. So we have we're very fortunate to have a panel with us that brings together different parts of these conversations both from Cyprus and abroad. Um so to kick us off, let me invite our panelists actually to introduce themselves and share their first thoughts on this topic and we'll pick it up from there. Um do you want to go first? >> Yeah. I've been Thank you. >> I think it's open. So I've been uh working with free and open software for quite a long time and I'm an enthusiast of that and we we realized that it's it's a real advantage using this software and this applications and we we started creating communities in order to promote this in our country and try to make things a little bit better. Out of this effort create, we created the L which is the organization now uh that is inside the the sequ [snorts] because there is we stole this work from our friends in Greece. uh in order to promote this idea of free on software um we have a lot of uh failures some successes and here we are now trying to see how to promote this idea okay >> okay I will use it just for the introduction so uh so my name is Paul I'm from Bernham University of Technology in the Czech Republic and uh we are part of the uh NGI0 community let's say uh specifically we are a partner uh in the projects or series of projects that are uh that is responsible for outreach activities. So uh we in addition to our local uh local guys, we we run uh the the group of regional representatives in several widening countries including Cyprus and and Greece and uh we try to organize it across Europe or across these uh these widening countries. now being built in India uh and uh trying to to promote the uh the the opportunities and also recently this opensource software and hardware in Europe for people that don't know like can you expand a bit on what AGI is the NGI stands for uh new generation internet it's kind of uh yeah European Commission is uh we have experts in uh coming with new names. So it's the program that ended but the support for open uh source uh remains in the uh the current program and uh hopefully will appear there in in the new uh framework program uh 10. So from 2028 and uh it's the program uh which supported uh the the calls every let's say two months to now there was a call for opensource solutions let's say software plus hardware plus maybe open standards and other other stuff and uh you could get as an individual developer or or let's say group small group uh of developers up to 50,000 euros for your projects. So funding open source project. >> Yes, let's move on to Silia. >> Thank you. So my name is Sylvia. I'm coming from the University of Cyprus Library. Um I have been working as a university officer uh since 2004 and since 2009 I have been actively involved uh in the topic of open science which is an umbrella term including a lot of aspects including open access to publications to data and uh open educational [clears throat] resources etc. So since then we are as a library we are working as a national open access desk providing support to all uh um relevant stakeholders and uh through this role we have been also involved in the uh creation of the national policy uh of open access in Cyprus. This was uh in 2016. Uh after an event like this uh we had a meeting with all the stakeholders including policy makers and institutions uh universities and other uh interested parties. Uh so the result of this was the first uh uh national policy uh which was finally revised in uh 2022 again through um a a procedure uh of uh negotiating between different stakeholders, interested stakeholders under the opices of the um uh deputy ministry of research, innovation and digital policy. And uh with this comes all the relevant uh topics and aspects related to openness and um >> yeah can we go a bit more into what actually you achieved through this open access policy like two or three key milestones? Well, what is expected is that uh all research outputs produced uh by publicly funded projects uh are expected to be in open access. >> Currently happening >> uh this is currently happening uh when when we are talking about public money. >> Okay. >> Publicly funded >> publicly projects. Yes. Yes. So yeah that's it I will stop here and we will talk to also >> hello I'm casiz at kios research innovation center of excellence which is under the university of cyprus I've been involved with open science since six years ago so at kios we have an open science committee which aims to create the policies related to open science so first I was a member six years ago for the last almost three years I'm the chair of that committee. Uh we took a large number of initiatives. So we built an open science policy uh through this time. So we aim to make our center align with European priorities. Uh we took a lot of actions to raise awareness in our researchers. So did a lot of trainings. We took many initiatives. One of them used to have an open science ideas of the science award which we which we give annually since three years ago. Uh so we do uh try to bring forward a culture of openness in the center and we also created a strategy for the next 10 years on how the center should follow this uh uh uh this culture these ideas. So we created uh specific practices and processes such that uh open science should be followed in the next years. uh our initiatives are well recognized among the EU. So our center has received a series of awards for our initiatives. So we received the the last three year we received award from Yun uh from you and also I think it's open for that has named kios the strategic player in [snorts] Cypus for open source. So they have this flagship and they reached us. So this is so we do try to bring initiatives and we try to uh do our best to bring this culture inside but not just in our center >> and what what was the main drive for you to chase this path I understand you did it within let's say what what were you trying to what were expectations let's say what you're trying to achieve >> so it's the understanding of the increasing part so I'm I'm a researcher so for me it was First open open science was meaning open access to publications. First it was the understanding that this led to higher visibility. So having understanding that this helps promote these ideas. But then I started seeing how people started using open data. One of the members of the committee actually created a code which has I think more than 1 million downloads now. And this actually is is from our repositories that's downloaded. So we've seen actually impact from our initiatives and I think this was like a positive feedback like we've done things we've seen them working and then we >> shall we move on. >> Okay. Thank you. I am facilit I'm the director of research and technological support at the Cypus Institute. So I have my responsibilities are uh the administrative and financial management of our external funding which is half the budget of the Cypress Institute. Also the coordination, the supervision of the central research infrastructures and the research infrastructures in the sense of facilities, capabilities, knowh how that can be used by researchers to do scientific research, produce audits and innovation. Uh so my [clears throat] approach in this discussion from the point of view of the research center and also the research infrastructure and for us our primary interest is open science. Okay. But open science the broader sense that covers also reproducibility, equitable opportunities for researchers, for companies and uh so this brings also open access to our research infrastructures especially the HBC and AI facility that we have in the Cypus Institute provides equitable access to academic users and tomemes for research and innovation. >> But can you explain the acronyms just for people? HPC >> high performance computing. It's this our superco computer uh that uh until recently it was mainly for traditional HPCUs. Recently we upgraded with AI optimized GPUs and so we will serve the academic and business community of Cyprus for uh for AI applications. So we we have a framework that is uh in effect since many years and will continue to be in effect to provide equitable access to all. So whether someone works for the Cypus Institute or for the University of Cyprus or from anme can have access to to these compute resources. So of course we prioritize uh open uh source code. Uh we we have uh standard frameworks and execution environments so that uh whatever uh is uh run uh in our facility can then be reproduced elsewhere in other facilities. We also uh are very active in projects that support the digital transformation ofmemes and public organizations. And these services are are also provided for free. And so this is another aspect another uh let's say way of approaching uh open access. And uh regarding uh the the main question in this panel in in this uh event research infrastructure so research facilities in general can support opensource uh through technical capabilities through open access and also through engagement with the stakeholders frommemes academy uh research centers Because this is also another important component of this discussion how to to to to promote this bridge this interaction this uh engagement with everyone. Thank you very much. >> Yes. Hello everyone. My name is Ail Brook. I am global sovereignty ambassador at Soua which means I travel around and I talk about digital sovereignty and open source. And besides that and that might be interesting for this panel. I'm also co-founder of the DOSBA. That's the Dutch Open Source Business Alliance. So in other words, a cooperation of all companies in the Netherlands that make money with open source software. >> You would like to elaborate a bit more on that? >> Yeah, absolutely. It was the industry approach let's say. Yeah, the industry approach it was um we noticed that there were um different definitions of digital sovereignty floating around and even different definitions of open source and we wanted to make it very clear what open source is, what digital sovereignty is and therefore we embraced the definition of the EU in the EU cloud framework. they made a clear definition of that and um we want to lobby within the Dutch government and through MPL we will lobby uh and that's we do now lobby in European uh institutions to make sure that um if public money is spent that it's going to public code and if commercial organizations uh choose to spend money that it's a very wise decision to spend it in open source How's it going to >> Well, uh we have 42 um companies attached to DWA and you understand being a nerd 42. I really love that number. So yeah, we have to stop now or we have to go to only 42 * 2 or but yeah um I I think we have a fair representation of the open source companies in the Netherlands and I can also say that if you see the companies that now care about the European overarching organization that's really a staggering number of uh companies and you really have a strong representation there. Yeah, it's important to note to emphasize that because for many years open wasn't making money on something like let's say this gray area. It's very [clears throat] important to have like companies that can actually make money on this commercialized. >> Yeah. Well, making money above with open source, it's uh something in uh some uh environments that's almost seen as as cursing. And uh we want to make clear that uh if you really are looking for the uh most secure most trustworthy um open-source software that has a enterprise organization it's a very wise decision to look if there is an organization a company that can deliver the appropriate support. >> Good. Thank you. So we already had that round let's say of um statements. Is there anything something that you would like to comment upon based upon something someone else said before we move to the next round? No. [clears throat] Well, it's it's not very often we have events like this in cyber. So I would like to thank uh the people behind this the capital series in all perform Europe and our esteemed guests and everybody that work behind the shadows to make this happen. [applause] Let's move on since you are holding the mic. Um maybe can start for you the next round. um from your community perspective, you know, from the grassroots approach, let's say, um if we come to apply the principles that the community stands for like transparency and openness to what we're trying to achieve here on public infrastructure, digital infrastructure and all that. what would need to change on how we evaluate technology, how we evaluate processes, uh how we choose in the end, how we use this kind of technologies in the open technologies mindset. >> So basically you want to know how to make this how to push this to >> yeah which is the topic >> to the actually >> to the government to the public interest. >> Yeah. um we we try as I said we tried a lot of many times in the past but uh there were maybe our approach was um wrong I don't know maybe they couldn't understand it or maybe um I'm not really sure what is the correct answer in this case but uh I would say we could start by trying to approach some key persons like for example the uh deputy minister for technology innovation. You can reach out to these people and explain them the benefits what this thing provide the the openness the collaboration needed the this the autonomy that it gives you. I think we could persuade them to start adopting these technologies and one good step would be I've seen the they are becoming a trend this opensource policy offices so maybe it's a good idea if we will have one here trying to promote and push these ideas into the public sector hopefully next time we'll have a representative government politics uh >> yeah that's that's always have been a problem with our revenge. That's the at sometime we we said okay this doesn't the top bottom approach doesn't work so maybe we should try the bottom up and we started let's teach the kids and we have some kids here Mario is one of them not kid anymore [laughter] but here some of momentum beating up now so hopefully we can bring those two together. >> Good. Let's move on to Sylvia maybe. Um Sophia like from your perspective you mentioned about already doing a lot from the open science digitalization perspective. So uh you mentioned best practices during outbreak we touch upon it a bit. Um so in terms of like the things you learned from all these years like in terms of practices of infrastructures that we have in place how could Cypress move on with more confidence? What what are like some examples we can take to our public code public infrastructure uh digital sovereign type of uh infrastructure so we don't have to start from scratch let's say based on what we learn >> actually we are not starting from scratch we have examples we have even the government has the data of uh why that it is uh based on an opensource software so there are examples that we can use there There are best practices. For example, we at the library I can only talk from my perspective. Uh we are using opensource softwares to for our cultural heritage the digital items. So uh we have uh practices there that we can showcase that we can uh also provide to show the impact as Andreas already mentioned. Uh so we're not starting from scratch. We just have to make a bit more advocacy maybe uh maybe some more contracts to the right people to the key persons in Cyprus. But not only h I think Cyprus is not the only one facing uh these kind of problems. But as already mentioned in in the uh panels before, it's about a culture. It's about shifting uh a a decades culture. So um we just have to show the impact uh make uh the correct connections and uh I think we can move forward. >> Good. Uh D would you like to talk again earlier we discussed a bit about the challenges let's say coming from you want to say something in advance no >> okay so we we discussed about the challenges coming from academia like in terms of getting like on the commercialization side of things and how I think it was mentioned earlier in the keynote how like what the challenges when you are coming from an open source and open background let's say to raise money and commercialize your IP so maybe you can share a bit more on that like between you you know the the open approach let's say around lake knowledge data and software and then on the other sides the intellectual property and the commercialization challenges from your perspective >> okay thank you thank you so at our center kios so we try to promote this culture of openness of reproducibility reusability [clears throat] >> so this is not just of open publications which is at least in academia this is what first comes to mind but also on open data data open source on how to make our code open. In this there's a a lot of uh inhibitors on how people perceive ops. When it comes to data, this is mostly about things like privacy and safety of data with our partners. With open source, an important uh inhibitor is a perception that openness contradicts intellectual property. So uh many people have this perception that if we give things open then things lose their value and what we try to make is to create a culture that brings forward that openness and intellectual authority can go together. So we're currently in the process of creating a policy at the center which combines openness, open science and intellectual. So we aim to do this in order to uh and push forward the culture of keyboard [clears throat] adopting this uh these now how it can be achieved it's another thing so awareness is one thing so we do try to educate hero so we do our policies in order to help IP culture is still at least in the recent environment is still not that strong at least compared have other countries. So I think educ also and IP will help resolve issues because it will help understand that these things can coexist and having this information easily accessible to people or making people move forward in this direction. I think it can help jointly this. The other thing I think could help is uh is government policy. So at least in our representative there's a very strong culture in being public but this came not just from awareness or from our policy but because Horizon Europe requires open public interest right in other while in other let's say encourage I'm not saying that panning body should like say require strictly that all open source like all software should be open source but if These elements are instilled towards the ground if it's required to check for commercialization understand IP and then when there is no restriction make your code open or move forward towards IP protection and open source I think this will help drive the culture so I would say that how vision going forward is to have mutually openness has impacted in commercialization from this tool and as a as a reinforcing not as [snorts] a hindering element between perfect thank you let's move on to basilis before we go back to our European friends [clears throat] basil um you described like the existing capacity um through research infrastructures and how important is for open and equitable access um to research and innovation um what role could these institutions play the research institutions that have a strong presence inside play at the national level in this change in terms of you know building bridges let's say between the public sector needs on one side and real implementation in the end of this digital infrastructure. >> Yes. First as their role is primarily to be a hub for experimentation for using advanced resources advanced technology. So if this bridging character is combined with some kind of uh support is it an office as you said earlier. So it's a kind of research support research technical support that can support users to both use open and also to produce opensource code that can be used afterwards. So this is let's say one kind of uh one possible service that can be provided uh together with for example the computer resources uh also research facilities and infrastructures can uh play the role of uh of project factors where companies academic users can uh can build a new project uh can uh can bring new funding uh can uh engage with uh with other stakeholders abroad etc etc. Uh so yes they can they can build ecosystems in fact okay but these ecosystems need a more pieces of this puzzle so that they produce concrete results. So this idea of the open software program office can be a solution towards uh towards this direction. Good. M um what's that what does it take in the end for open source to become something that organizations, corporations, government consume but also something they support, they contribute to they collaborate with all the stakeholders and build businesses as we said earlier around it. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think what's important is that you organize. So, uh OSPO is a really good uh initiative for sure set up [snorts] for cycles. Uh there are experiences in other countries now how to do that. Uh where to start. Uh there is for example something I can recommend to anyone. There is the OSPO alliance. They have a handbook for um basically how you uh um manage a IT environment in a nice way in a uh public friendly way. So that's something I can recommend to uh do and another thing is what we did in the Netherlands and what other countries did 14 at this moment are um organized in the so make also sure that you have a representation of your open source companies and it doesn't matter how big or how small they are as long as you make money with open source software. So it can be a uh self-employed uh person until the largest company that you have here. As long as the core business is open source then uh make sure that you um find let's see we started with 15 20 companies and yeah some sometimes we're competitors but step over that and see that if we are able to use the momentum right now with as was said earlier in the keynotes uh with the chief marketing officer and the other side of the pond make sure that we take that momentum and then the pie will grow in so much way that you don't have to fight over each other's speeds but everyone will be able to make a good uh profit and a good revenue out of open source business. >> Thank you. Thank you. I mean let's come back to Pal. Um Pavl um can you can you share a bit from your experience from your perspective on like what can make this kind of co coordination between co stakeholders like work in real practice let's say how like rather than be remaining let's say a loose network of good intentions let's say how can we make this ecosystem come together and you know produce change >> I will try to uh to uh answer it uh I can uh like for my uh let's say perspective on the in the Czech Republic I can also repeat what what does not work which [laughter] is sometimes sometimes you know you should not repeat the the errors we made and but uh what I can say that that we are trying there is a group of open source enthusiasts that organize every every year national or semi uh conference called open alternative uh in November. It's open to to uh general public and speaks English. So uh so you you can uh contribute and participate in the event and uh so at least some of the uh let's say government officials were present uh but also it's it's linked to the you know there were uh some uh some presentations that were uh against the [snorts] uh the the current policy situation. and political party. So there were very very strong position of of the the presenters. So that's something that probably does not directly help uh in in this sense but but at least it brings some visibility and there are uh there are other activities that uh that can uh link at least the uh the public infrastructure and uh and the open source community in general and in our case because I have the academic background. uh so uh research at the universities. So for example we we have one of the open source projects uh not not paid by by partially by by municipalities but opening the data that are also uh like very important for uh for doing decisions on on every level. So municipality level and then then some some districts and and other and other stuff. So uh that's uh yeah the the opportunities to try to to put together the the public sector of course the research and and to let's say enthusiasts that that are involved. >> What should we not do? Uh well yeah there are many many things that uh like these hot debates on on the the the politics it's problematic to to have at the conference level and there are many many things like yeah we had the the presentation from the EC what I don't understand uh I also review the projects Europe gives billions of euro every year for for research and there is still the communication dissemination communication right I don't understand why the uh like the the commission the the the payers don't don't insist on running on the let's say social media right everybody now is moving or moved from Twitter X to other networks but there there are open source alternatives uh nobody uses Modelon network but we could and they could ask easily you know to to publish everything there. So yeah, there are simple ways to to do it and I don't understand why it's not not going. >> Thank you. So I think we have three more minutes. Maybe we can like is there someone that would like some final comment or maybe we can suggest any question from the audience? Anyone that would like to ask something? No. Any final statements from our side? >> [snorts] >> So there was a very recent nightmarish legis proposed legislation from the European Union. We we nickname it ch control and we kill it but it's coming back. Anyway, one of the early drafts of this proposal was that um it basically they wanted to monitor every and each one of us except themselves which >> is exactly the opposite of what we would like to see here. We would like to see technology that promotes transparency for public matters, promotes transparency for public officials and promote privacy for the individuals. Thank you. [applause] Good. So I think through our discussion it became evidence that Citrus does not lack the ingredients to get this forward. There's civic capacity, there's research infrastructure and knowledge, there's open science um experience, technical expertise and of course European loan age to draw upon. Um so I think the challenge here is coordination. Silia I think you mentioned from a previous kind of meeting last time you had another meeting and then things started happening so hopefully I think that's my let's go and do this next meeting so we can get things happening um between all of us here um so try to combine all these efforts into let's say shared public capability. So yeah hopefully today's discussion has given us some direction or pedits let's say from some next steps on what could come. So yeah, thank you to all our panelists and everyone here for joining us. Thank you. >> Thank you. [applause]