Open source in Europe: BlueHats, the French public sector initiative, winner

Illustration of the launch of the BlueHats community by Dinsic (Dinum since)

The OSOR (Open Source Observatory and Repository, launched in 2006 by the European Commission) Community Award had called on Internet users to vote for their favorite public sector open source project. Among the 22 projects in the running, BlueHats, the French open source public sector initiative, won, with 18% of all votes – 7 points more than the second most supported. Three other projects were also in competition with the French: Démarches-simplifiées.fr (also from Dinum), CiteLibre (from Lutèce, or the City of Paris – still no VF for the site?) and GeoTrek (born in 2012, “the result of a co-conception between the Ecrins National Park, the Mercantour National Park, the Alpi Marittime Park and the Makina Corpus company” to “manage and enhance your trails and tourist activities”).

93 candidate projects from 23 countries

The #BlueHatsinitiative initiative that brings together those who, in public administration, promote and support free #Opensource #Softwarethis wins the “OSOR Community Award 2023” cc @OSOReu! pic.twitter.com/xaDE6MUbG7

— code.gouv.fr (@codegouvfr) November 3, 2023

The winner will present his project at the conference “OSOR Turns 15: From Pioneering to Mainstreaming Open Technologies in Public Services” on November 21 in Brussels, alongside the six finalists of the “EU Public Services Open Source Achievement Awards” chosen by the jury.

The Commission indicates that this year, the competition has “seen the nomination of 22 projects, comprising 16 solutions and 6 initiatives, selected by the OSOR team and experts from the European Commission. The awards attracted 93 eligible applications from 23 countries” [liste des candidats là].

Created in 2018, BlueHats is now “a dynamic community of more than 2,000 civil servants and developers promoting open source in the public sector”, presents the press release on this award. This government presentation page explains that “the DINSIC [ancêtre de la DINUM] initiated the #bluehats movement in December 2018 during the Paris Open Source Summit. Since then, she has published a bimonthly #bluehats gazette which gives news about the free in the administration. [on peut la lire là – dernière édition, septembre 2023]

Each administration or free software actor can organize #bluehats events around software used in the administration or published by the administration. Members of the #bluehats community are invited to wear blue hats during technical events and to use the #bluehats keyword on their code repositories and their messages via social networks.»

The BlueHats community is participating in the Open Source Experience fair (its presentations during the 2022 edition).

A recent action:

“The free software division of DINUM and the CentraleSupélec school offer
to CentraleSupélec students the opportunity to learn how to
contribute to free software, through an internship within the
DINUM. The first edition of the BlueHats Semester of Code was held from
september 2022 to February 2023.»