As Google knows everything anyway today we decided from now on we manage our family finances with Google Docs. After long negotiations we agreed on a common categorization of our spendings. My highlite of the day was that I could play around with Google Spreadsheets and program a little ‘lightweight’ budgeting table including a convenient entry form. Here is the demo - unfortunately with fictive numbers as my salary isn’t in that league yet ;)

One needs just to load the form, and fill in the values. Then the spending (or earning) data gets sent to the table, updates the current summary of the actual figures, and compares it with the planned numbers. If an error occurs the entered data may be easily corrected in the list of payments. And the best thing: The form also works on a smartphone, e.g. my new Android HTC Hero, thus I don’t need to keep all the receipts but enter the beers and cinema visits while running.

Finally the Wikipedia DE community accepted the entry for “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit”. Just hours after my initial publication of the short article a request for deletion was posted by Wikipedia watchers. This was followed by a long discussion between the editors, Thorsten Busch, and myself. In the end, one of the Wikipedia admins reasoned that our parliamentarian group, the Open Source Jahrbuch, and the ETH Zürich together are able to establish a new terminology - how powerful we are ;)

Nevertheless this incident proved for me personally that Wikipedia and open content systems are able to function on a sustainable basis - exactly the idea behind our definition of digital sustainability. The immediate reaction that the term is not yet established was justified and forced me to improve and enhance the article with other sources I found.

BTW, the two other Wikipedia articles I’ve created in the English chapter didn’t stimulate any discussion: the private-collective model of innovation and Prof. Georg von Krogh. Either they are much more established than the term “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit” (which they are of course ;) or the German Wikipedia community is really as rigorous as recently discovered.

There hasn’t been a political vote for a long time that has been so important to me: the prohibition of weapon exports. I’ve given several public statements at StopArmut events, discussion panels and party meetings on my opinion to ban Swiss military exports. Below is the ad which was published in several newspapers yesterday. And tonight I’ll be going resp. laying on the street at the biggest Swiss Flashmob ever!

Yesterday I had a talk at the 3rd E-Government Symposium in Bern about how to use the open source community principle in e-government projects. Interest in the topic was huge compared to my speech two years ago. This time the room was full of people. Many came to me after the presentation to talk about the ideas and possible future applications in federal and cantonal e-government projects. It seems open source is finally becoming a more mainstream topic - even in public administration!

Nachhaltige, innovative eGovernment-Lösungen basierend auf dem Open Source Community-Prinzip

“Einsparungen durch Mehrfachnutzung und offene Standards: Dank dem Prinzip Einmal entwickeln - mehrfach anwenden, offenen Standards und gegenseitigem Austausch werden die Investitionen optimal genutzt.” Dieser Grundsatz, zitiert aus der E-Government-Strategie Schweiz, illustriert prägnant die Vorteile von Open Source Software und Open Standards für E-Government Vorhaben.

Aber nicht nur die freie Wiederverwendung der Technologien selbst, sondern auch deren Herstellungsprozesse bieten öffentlichen Institutionen Potential für Kostenersparnisse und Innovationen um eine nachhaltige Digitalisierung sicherzustellen. Neue, kollaborative Ansätze der Software-Entwicklung in öffentlichen Verwaltungen sind erfolgreich wie das von mehreren Kantonen gemeinschaftlich entwickelte Gemeinderegistersystem GERES für die Volkszählung 2010 oder Beschaffungspraktiken des Vereins Schweizerische Städte- und Gemeinde-Informatik SSGI zeigen. Wie diese Beispiele demonstrieren, erlauben innovative Organisationsstrukturen, anlehnend an das Community-Prinzip von Open Source Projekten, die hemmenden Seiten des Föderalismus zu überwinden und gewährleisten gleichzeitig die Handlungsfreiheit und Abdeckung der individuellen Bedürfnissen der einzelnen Verwaltungsstellen.

Das Referat erläutert Grundlagen des Open Source Entwicklungsmodells, portraitiert aktuelle E-Government Projekte basierend auf Open Source Software und Open Standards und zeigt auf, wie Behörden künftig noch besser die Vorteile des Community-Prinzips nutzen können. Insbesondere werden der Begriff der “Digitalen Nachhaltigkeit” eingeführt und aktuelle Tätigkeiten aus der gleichnamigen Parlamentarischen Gruppe zusammengefasst.

Kurz-Biographie

Matthias Stürmer, Dr. sc. ETH Zürich, lic.rer.pol., hat im Sommer 2009 an der ETH Zürich seine Dissertation über den Einfluss von Firmen auf Open Source Communities abgeschlossen und arbeitet heute als Projektleiter und Berater bei der Web-Entwicklungsfirma Liip. Daneben ist er Vorstandsmitglied der Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open und Sekretär der Parlamentarischen Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit.

Portrait Parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit

Wissen ist für die Schweiz von grosser volkswirtschaftlicher Bedeutung: Bildung der Bevölkerung, Innovationskraft der Unternehmen, Effizienz in der öffentlichen Verwaltung, Exzellenz in der Wissenschaft – fast alle Gesellschaftsbereiche setzen die langfristige und offene Verfügbarkeit von Wissensgütern voraus. Im heutigen Informationszeitalter sind somit ein nachhaltiger Umgang mit digitalen Technologien gefragt um in der Schweiz das Potential der fortschreitende Digitalisierung auch in Zukunft nutzen zu können.

Zur Thematisierung und Förderung dieses Anliegens auf politischer Ebene ist im Mai 2009 die parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit gegründet worden. Präsidiert von Nationalrätin Edith Graf-Litscher (SP, Kt. Thurgau) und Nationalrat Christian Wasserfallen (FDP.Die Liberalen, Kt. Bern) und besetzt mit 23 weiteren Mitgliedern aus dem National- und Ständerat unterstützt die Gruppe den nachhaltigen und innovativen Umgang mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien. Die vier konkreten Handlungsgebiete umfassen die Förderung von Open Source Software, offenen Standards sowie freiem Zugriff auf Forschungsresultate (Open Access) und andere Inhalte (Open Content).

Today was one of my most political days:

First, in the afternoon, I met Federal Council Micheline Calmy-Rey and Martin Dahinden, the director of the Swiss Development Agency, in order to pass them on a petition of our campaign StopArmut 2015. They took 20 minutes to listen to our concern that Switzerland joins the Global Framework for Action on Water and Sanitation. Later in the news Swiss national radio station SR DRS as well as several online platforms reported about the event.

Then later in the evening I participated in a panel discussion about the early vote on the prohibition of Swiss weapon exports. Although only a few people attended the discussion it was an interesting conversation as my opponent was a member of the same party as I’m in, the Swiss Evangelical People’s Party EVP. Therefore we share many similar values but still came to a different conclusion about the impact of such a weapon export prohibition. Fritz Heiniger’s main argument was that GSoA, the originator of the initiative, just wants to abolish the Swiss army - which is true but has nothing to do with the current vote!

In this week’s Netzwoche there is an article of mine about the concept of Digital Sustainability:

Digitale Nachhaltigkeit - ein Konzept mit Zukunft
Der nachhaltige Umgang ist nicht nur bei natürlichen Ressourcen notwendig, sondern wird künftig auch bei digitalen Gütern immer wichtiger. Doch welche Auswirkungen und Potenziale hat diese Entwicklung für Produzenten und Konsumenten insbesondere von Software?

Now it’s final final: The 40 printed copies of my doctoral dissertation have arrived (everything written and layoutet with OpenOffice.org). Here on this blog I publish the abstract of the thesis. If anyone is interested in the full thesis, please let me know.

How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation

Abstract: When firms contribute to open source projects, they in fact invest into public goods which may be used by everyone, even by their competitors. This seemingly paradoxical behavior can be explained by the model of private-collective innovation where private investors participate in collective action. Previous literature has shown that companies benefit through the production process providing them with unique incentives such as learning and reputation effects. By contributing to open source projects firms are able to build a network of external individuals and organizations participating in the creation and development of the software. As will be shown in this doctoral dissertation firm-sponsored communities involve the formation of interorganizational relationships which eventually may lead to a source of sustained competitive advantage. However, managing a largely independent open source community is a challenging balancing act between exertion of control to appropriate value creation, and openness in order to gain and preserve credibility and motivate external contributions. Therefore, this dissertation consisting of an introductory chapter and three separate research papers analyzes characteristics of firm-driven open source communities, finds reasons why and mechanisms by which companies facilitate the creation of such networks, and shows how firms can benefit most from their communities.

Amadeus Wittwer had the great idea to make a short documentation about regular computer users being put in front of a Linux machine - without being told that it’s Linux (it’s the Ubuntu Netbook Remix). Have a look at the great experiment:

The official press release starts like this:

Die Alternative zu Windows 7: Schweizer Doku-Clip über Linux
Alle Welt spricht von Windows 7. Wer weiss jedoch, wie ein aktueller Linux Desktop aussieht? Ein Filmteam aus der Schweizer Open Source Szene ging dieser Frage nach. Das Resultat zeigt, dass Linux durchaus eine Alternative zu proprietären Betriebssystemen darstellt.

Read the full press release on USUSv2.

Since spring, when we founded the Parlamentarische Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit (group of parliamentarians on digital sustainability), interest in this topic is rising. This and next month only I’m doing four speeches on these issues starting tomorrow in Vienna:

“Digitale Nachhaltigkeit: Zusammenhang zwischen Open Source Software, Offenen Standards und freiem Wissen” October 13th, 2009 at Fachtagung „InterOperabilität - vom Stand der Technik zu Zukunftsstrategien auf europäischer Ebene“ in Vienna, Austria

“Open Source 2010: Vision eines Lobbyisten” October 28th, 2009 at Puzzle Tech Talk, Bern, Switzerland

“Digitale Nachhaltigkeit: Auswirkungen für Business und Gesellschaft” November 12th, 2009 at World Usability Day, Technopark, Zürich, Switzerland

“Nachhaltige, innovative eGovernment-Lösungen basierend auf dem Open Source Community-Prinzip” November 17th, 2009 in Fachsession of eGovernment-Symposium 2009, Bern, Switzerland

Although I’ll focus a little bit for each presentation and adapt the slides, the key message stays the same as is has done in my previous speeches on this topic:

“Digitale Nachhaltigkeit in der Schweiz – ein Bericht zur Lage der Nation” September 23th, 2009 at OpenExpo, Switzerland (YouTube and PDF slides)

Participant of panel discussion “Proprietäre Software versus Opensource – Erfahrungen im Dokumenten Management” September 18th, 2009 at eGov Fokus “Dokumenten-Management und Langzeitarchivierung”, Kompetenzzentrum Public Management und E-Government, Berner Fachhochschule Wirtschaft und Verwaltung, Switzerland

“Netzzunft-Treffen: Politik 2.0 Teil 1 – Digitale Nachhaltigkeit” July 29th, 2009 at ETH Zürich, Switzerland (PDF slides)

Thinking about the passed and the planned presentations I realize that we’re indeed in the middle of the process of defining the term “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit” or digital sustainability. Just tonight I spoke with my ETH-PhD colleague Marcus Dapp (his blog) about his definition of “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit” - he doesn’t have one either despite teaching his lecture “Digitale Nachhaltigkeit in der Wissensgesellschaft” (lecture slides) for the fourth time - he promised me to change this soon ;)

A week ago I finished my doctoral dissertation project by successfully defending my thesis against tricky questions by my supervisor Prof. Georg von Krogh and co-referee Prof. Sonali Shah - who came directly from Seattle just for this examination! So thanks to everyone who shared the thrill with me - especially Martin Krafft who asked a nasty question on methodology in the end! Well, I forgive you knowing that your defense is still coming up ;) - Here’re BTW the defense slides:

Thus my long educational career is almost at its end. I just need to clean up the thesis now, print it and hand it in, then I may finally be called doctor ;) However, it’s not yet the end of academia. At the moment I’m teaching Strategic Management with Georg and also write a revision of our lightweight reuse paper. And if things turn out well I might even start a new research project on open source communities - let’s see what the future brings!