Bryan Sivak, Chief Technical Officer of the District of Columbia, admits there's a lot of talk about the use of open source in government, but the issues are a little more difficult than that. He celebrates a 20% Linux data center, the Design for Democracy competitions, and the introduction of secure online absentee voting through the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV). But meanwhile, he says, the procurement documents for software systems often have no answer filled in the 'Alternatives' field: "What open-source solutions have you considered?"

The sticking points are licensing, support, and an honest assessment of cost. Some licensing terms of open-source still make government leery. Proprietary software vendors pride themselves on service and setup, with certain out-of-the-box expectations, while open-source solutions don't necessarily guarantee any particular benefits or fitness of purpose, so configuring it to an agency's needs, and servicing it, are unknown costs.

Yet the shift is happening. Sivak talks about the creation of "Code for America," and envisions the development of "a civic stack of software that can work anywhere," created with the aid of legal and marketing framework provided by the new organization.