Open source software in governments
The UK government set the bar with their GOV.UK project which launched somewhere around 2011 with their Open Government Partnership outlined in the UK Action Plan 2011–13.
Other countries, like Norway has followed suit and seen the UK’s example as something to strive for and base themselves on. Many of the Norwegian government guidelines for open source code are based on GOV.UK’s guidelines.
The proliferation of open data and adoption and development of open source software in governments is not to be confused with Open-source governance which ‘advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document’.[1]
See also Web Experience Toolkit (Government of Canada)
References
Altinn: Building an open source government platform in the cloud
Government of Flanders working on giving every citizen a Solid Pod
GOV.UK – Data saves lives: reshaping health and social care with data (draft)