Guest Author: Martin Olivera
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Introduction: Open Source as a Governace Model for AI
As artificial intelligence reshapes economies and societies, a
fundamental question emerges: who governs the systems that increasingly govern
us? The answer may lie not in new regulations alone,
but in a decades-old approach to collaboration: open source.
The open source
model — transparent, participatory, and meritocratic — offers more than just
software. It provides a governance framework. When AI systems are built on open
code, auditable datasets, and collaborative communities, they become
accountable by design. This is not a technical preference; it is a governance
imperative.
Over the past three years, the United Nations has recognized this. Through a series of gatherings, from a small symposium in 2023 to a full-fledged UN Open Source Week in 2025, the multilateral system has been building the infrastructure — both technical and institutional — to make open approaches central to digital cooperation. This article traces that journey and asks what it means for the Global South.
Background: The Evolution of a Movement (2023-2025)
2023: The Foundation
The first OSPOs
for Good symposium, held at the UN Headquarters in June 2023 was attended by
nearly 70 participants, was a diagnostic exercise. The resulting report, Building
and Designing Cooperative Digital Infrastructure, identified three barriers
to open source adoption in the multilateral system: a knowledge gap about open
source, the sustainability crisis facing maintainers, and fragmentation of
efforts across institutions. Its proposal was to create Open Source Program
Offices (OSPOs) as an organizational API for cooperation, embedding open source
culture within governments and international bodies.
2024: The Consolidation
By July 2024, the
conversation had grown sevenfold, with over 500 participants filling the ECOSOC
Chamber. Thanks to the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), one of the event's
key sponsors, I was fortunate to be among them, walking those halls alongside longtime
open source advocates from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas whose work
spans decades. Those exchanges made clear how open source challenges transcend
borders and how much the movement gains when its veterans share the same room.
The theme, “Driving Global Open Source Collaboration to Achieve the SDGs,”
reflected a new maturity level. Two developments stood out.
First, Open
Source AI emerged as a central track. Panellists from the Open Source
Initiative (OSI), Hugging Face, and academia grappled with the opacity of large
language models. The consensus: AI algorithmic transparency requires not only
open code, but also open data and transparent training processes. As Stefano
Maffulli of OSI noted, "You need data, you need the code used for training
and the code used for cleaning the data."
Second, the UN
system began organizing itself. Five agencies — UNICEF, UNDP, FAO, UNICC, and
the Digital Public Goods Alliance — announced a community of practice to
coordinate open source efforts across the UN. The message from Lucy Harris of
DPGA was clear: "Public funds should go to creating public goods."
2025: The Ecosystem in Action
The first UN Open
Source Week in June 2025 transformed the conversation from a conference into an
ecosystem. Over five days, the program reflected the community's diversity:
●
The UN Tech Over Hackathon
drew participants — students, developers, and open source contributors from
around the world — who tackled real challenges proposed by UN agencies in areas
aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. The event featured multiple
formats: an Edit-A-Thon to strengthen open knowledge on Wikipedia, a hackathon
co-hosted by UNICEF focused on geospatial tools for climate emergency response,
and a Maintain-A-Thon that gave rare and overdue visibility to the invisible
work of developers who sustain critical digital infrastructure.
●
OSPOs for Good featured practical sessions on launching government OSPOs and a
high-level panel on "AI and Open Source: Building Ethical and Transparent
Systems," with contributions from Yann LeCun and UNESCO.
●
Digital Public
Infrastructure (DPI) Day shifted the focus from
software to systems, with ministers from Nigeria and the Dominican Republic
discussing how open identity, payment, and data exchange systems can be built
as digital commons.
Throughout the week, the integration of sectors was palpable. Government officials sat beside developers. Private sector leaders engaged with civil society. The open source community — once a niche technical interest — had become a stakeholder in global governance.
Present: The Infrastructure for Coordination
This evolution has
produced tangible infrastructure. In 2025, the UN Office of the
Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology began developing a set of UN Open
Source Principles, to guide open source adoption across the UN system and
among Member States. Since then, more than 60 organizations and governments -
including France as the first national government - have officially endorsed
them. These eight principles aim to embed openness, transparency, and
collaboration into the organization's digital DNA.
The most visible
outcome is the portal opensource.un.org.
Launched in March 2026 as a central gateway, it addresses the fragmentation
problem diagnosed in 2023. Here, one can discover UN-led open source projects,
access code repositories, and understand the organization's commitment to
digital public goods. It transforms the UN from a passive consumer of
proprietary technology into an active steward of open infrastructure.
Looking ahead, the UN Open Source Week 2026 — scheduled for June in New York — promises to build on this foundation. Early planning suggests a continued focus on the intersection of open source and AI governance, with deeper engagement from Member States and expanded participation from the Global South. The question is no longer whether open source belongs in the multilateral system, but how to scale it.
Conclusion: A Call to Action from the Global South
For countries in
the Global South, this moment is both an opportunity and a responsibility. Open
source offers a pathway to digital sovereignty: the ability to build, adapt,
and control technology according to local needs, without dependence on
proprietary vendors. But sovereignty requires capacity.
As Philip Thigo,
Special Envoy on Technology for Kenya, reminded us at the 2024 symposium,
"AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It still relies on people. To
democratize access, we need to invest in people and critical
infrastructure."
The invitation,
then, is not just to developers, but to scholars, diplomats, and citizens
across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The UN Open Source Principles and the
UN Open Source portal are tools, but they are only as powerful as the
communities that use them.
The future of
global governance will be digital. The question is whether the Global Southwill be a consumer of that future or its co-creator. The open source community
has built the tools. Now we must build the capacity.