Contents
The Concept of a Civic Technology Commons
The Commons refers to the idea of a shared pool of civic technology resources that governments can freely access, adopt, and contribute to. Just as a town commons provides shared public space for a community, a civic technology commons provides shared digital infrastructure for government agencies and the public they serve.
The fundamental insight behind The Commons is simple: governments across the country perform many of the same functions and need many of the same software tools. Budget management, service request tracking, permit processing, public notification systems, and dozens of other functions are common to virtually every municipality. Yet traditionally, each government has built or purchased its own version of these tools independently, resulting in enormous duplication of effort and expense.
How a Shared Marketplace Works
A civic technology commons functions as a marketplace where government agencies can discover software that other jurisdictions have already built and deployed. Rather than starting from scratch or issuing a request for proposals to build a custom solution, an agency can search the commons to find existing tools that address their needs.
Discovery and Evaluation
The marketplace catalogs civic applications along with critical information that helps agencies evaluate them:
- Deployment history showing which governments have used the software and how
- Technical requirements including infrastructure needs, programming languages, and dependencies
- Licensing terms confirming that the software can be freely used and modified
- Community activity indicating whether the project is actively maintained
- User feedback from agencies that have deployed the software in production
Adoption and Adaptation
Finding relevant software is only the first step. The Commons also supports the adoption process by providing documentation, deployment guides, and connections to other agencies that have experience with the software. Since the tools are open source, agencies can modify them to fit local requirements without being dependent on a single vendor.
The Economic Case for Sharing
Government IT spending in the United States runs into hundreds of billions of dollars annually when federal, state, and local spending are combined. Studies have consistently found that a significant portion of this spending goes toward developing software that already exists elsewhere in the public sector.
Consider a concrete example: when one city develops a budget visualization tool and publishes it as open source, any other city can deploy the same tool for a fraction of the original development cost. If ten cities adopt the tool instead of each building their own, the collective savings can be substantial. Multiply this across hundreds of common government functions, and the potential for cost reduction is enormous.
Beyond Cost Savings
The benefits of shared civic technology extend beyond direct financial savings:
- Quality improvement occurs naturally when multiple agencies use and contribute to the same software, catching bugs faster and adding features that benefit everyone
- Vendor independence gives agencies more negotiating power and eliminates lock-in to proprietary platforms
- Innovation acceleration happens when developers can build on existing open source foundations rather than starting from nothing
- Knowledge transfer between agencies creates a community of practice that raises the overall capability of government technology teams
Challenges and Solutions
Building an effective civic technology commons requires addressing several practical challenges.
Procurement Barriers
Government procurement processes are often designed around purchasing proprietary products from commercial vendors. Adopting open source software through a commons model may require adjustments to procurement policies, evaluation criteria, and contracting practices. Several organizations have developed procurement guides and policy templates to help agencies navigate these transitions.
Sustainability
Open source projects require ongoing maintenance, including security updates, bug fixes, and compatibility testing. A civic technology commons must address the question of who maintains shared software over time. Successful models include government-funded maintenance programs, nonprofit stewardship organizations, and commercial support providers who build businesses around open source civic tools.
Interoperability
For shared software to be truly useful, it must work within the diverse technical environments that different agencies maintain. This requires attention to open standards, modular architecture, and well-documented APIs that allow civic tools to integrate with existing government systems.
The Vision in Practice
The commons model has been validated by numerous real-world examples. Budget transparency tools developed by one city have been adopted by dozens of others. Service request platforms built on open standards serve millions of residents across multiple jurisdictions. Emergency notification systems, open data portals, and citizen engagement platforms have all demonstrated the viability of the shared approach.
Each successful deployment strengthens the case for the commons model and adds another contributor to the shared resource pool. As more governments participate, the commons grows richer and more valuable, creating a virtuous cycle of adoption and improvement that benefits communities everywhere.