Open Solutions for Government
Founded 2004
We envision a world where no public problem is solved twice.
Every year, public sector agencies spend billions on technology — often buying the same thing, over and over, with no ability to share what works. OGOV exists to change that.
We help public sector organizations design procurement that produces shareable, openly licensed technology — so that when one agency solves a problem, every agency benefits.
What we do
OGOV is a nonprofit working at the intersection of procurement policy and open source practice. We partner with governments, advocates, and technologists to modernize the way public agencies buy and build software.
Procurement reform
We develop model contract language, policy templates, and evaluation criteria that require new technology solutions to be licensed under the GPL or a comparable open source license.
Maturity assessment
The Open Solutions Maturity Model gives agencies a structured way to measure how open their technology practices really are — and a clear roadmap for improvement.
Practitioner support
We share playbooks, case studies, and peer connections so public servants don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to do this work.
Why this matters
Two ideas anchor OGOV's work.
Duplication limits innovation.
Sharing a solution is not the same as everyone buying the same product.
When a county pays a vendor to build a permit tracking system under a proprietary license, that work is locked away from every other county facing the same problem. Multiply that by tens of thousands of agencies and millions of contracts, and the cost — in duplicated spending, in stalled modernization, in lost public trust — is enormous.
Procurement is where the choice gets made. OGOV's work is to make the open choice the easy choice.
The Open Solutions Maturity Model
The OSMM is a practical, multi-dimensional framework for evaluating how well a public sector organization creates, procures, and shares open solutions. Paired with the OSMM Evaluation Agent, it gives agencies:
- A common vocabulary for describing open practice across procurement, licensing, governance, and reuse
- Benchmarks to measure current capability and identify the next concrete step
- A defensible, shareable methodology for evaluating vendors and internal programs
- A path from one-off open source projects to institutional capability
Assess. Improve. Share.
Agencies that adopt the OSMM don't just publish code — they build durable practice. Evaluation results are designed to be shared so peer agencies can learn from each other's progress.
Get involved
Whether you're a procurement officer, a policy lead, a technologist, or an advocate, there's a role for you in this work.
- Governments can use the OSMM to assess and improve their practice.
- Practitioners can contribute to the framework and share case studies.
- Funders and partners can support the movement toward open public infrastructure.