Maintaining the Future at UN Open Source Week

Hosted by the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies and the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology, UN Open Source Week 2025 brought together global leaders at the intersection of open source, digital governance, and public innovation. Over 1,000 participants from private sector, civil society, NGOs, governments and FOSS communities joined for five days to shape the future of open technologies and advance digital cooperation.

In June 2025, the Sovereign Tech Agency returned to the UN Open Source Week with an expanded scope of participation. Building on the momentum of the previous year, we hosted a maintain-a-thon, and contributed across multiple sessions, including a panel at OSPOs for Good day and community-organized side events. We brought a unique perspective, shaped by our role as the leading public institution in Europe dedicated to investing in critical digital infrastructure. Our strategic investments and other programs are recognized not only as a leading example within the open source ecosystem, but also for pioneering how governments engage with these communities. The Sovereign Tech Agency supports the foundational technologies that serve as the infrastructure of the 21st century. It was important to bring this practical experience to the global stage, offering a view into how the German government is developing working instruments to maintain and stabilize essential digital public goods.

Our delegation of experts for UN Open Source Week included 11 open source maintainers who work on critical infrastructure across diverse ecosystems. Their presence was central to our mission: creating space for maintainers to exchange effective practices, surface shared challenges, and translate lived experience into actionable strategies.

We were pleased to co-host the maintain-a-thon in partnership with Michael Winser from Alpha-Omega, bringing together maintainers, contributors, and other people active in the open source ecosystem. Structured as an unconference, participants worked in several groups guided by themes spanning the full lifecycle of an open source project, from inception to long-term maintenance to sunsetting. The sessions were led by the experts from our delegation, who facilitated discussions and helped bring out concrete, actionable insights across diverse thematic areas. To highlight just a few:

The session “Security for the Long-Haul”, led by Seth Larson, Security Developer-in-Residence at the Python Software Foundation, explored how feature-complete projects with limited maintainer capacity can sustain strong security practices. Topics included keeping configurations and tooling up to date, onboarding contributors for long-term maintenance, and building trust with those focusing on security.

Another session “Good First Issues”, hosted by Sarah Hoffmann from OpenStreetMap, focused on strategies for identifying approachable entry points and creating welcoming pathways for new contributors. The discussion highlighted the importance of clear documentation as a starting point, and the value of social platforms that offer a safe space to connect, ask questions, and build confidence. Participants also explored ways to lower barriers to entry and emphasized that meaningful contributions extend beyond code.

The maintain-a-thon proved to be profoundly impactful for maintainers who often work in isolation or within specific communities. Despite operating in different domains, many face similar structural challenges. Creating a shared space to exchange experiences, discussed common pain points, and collaboratively define practical responses fostered both insight and solidarity. The unconference approach enabled maintainers to walk away not only with new perspectives, but with concrete, adaptable actions they can apply within their own projects, strengthening the sustainability and resilience of open source infrastructure as a whole.

On Day 3 of UN Open Source Week, the focus turned to Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs), strategic units within governments, businesses, and institutions that facilitate engagement with the open source ecosystem. OSPOs play a crucial role in enabling collaboration, promoting open source, and building sustainable structures in companies, public administrations, and other organizations.

Sovereign Tech Agency’s CEO Adriana Groh joined the panel discussion together with Dr. Wolfgang Gehring (Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation), Miller Abel (Gates Foundation), Gabriele Columbro (Linux Foundation Europe), and Franck Greverie (Capgemini) on “The Role of Open Source in Digital Public Infrastructure”, where she shared insights into our work and the broader vision behind it.

She emphasized that open source is foundational to modern digital infrastructure, and its maintenance and development must be seen as a shared, ongoing responsibility, not as one-off funding efforts, but as long-term, strategic investment.

Adriana also highlighted the importance of governments understanding not just the value of open source, but the way it is produced and maintained. As a public organization, the Sovereign Tech Agency operates with the mindset that supporting open source is not optional, but essential. This means moving beyond transactional funding toward sustained investment that strengthens the ecosystem for everyone.

You can watch the full panel discussion at UN Web TV, starting at 01:58:24:

Watch the panel at UN Web TV

The final day of UN Open Source Week featured a full slate of community-organized side events, supported by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, OpenForum Europe, and CURIOSS, and hosted at PwC's office in New York.

Sovereign Tech Agency contributed with the session “Invisible Work, Critical Code”, highlighting the often-overlooked labor behind maintaining essential open source infrastructure. Drawing from insights surfaced during the week’s maintain-a-thon, the session focused on the long-term responsibility maintainers carry—from security patching and governance to managing burnout and dependencies. A panel discussion, featuring Bastien Guerry, French Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM), Qianqian Ye (Processing Foundation) and Ruth Ikegah (CHAOSS / SDG Working Group), explored how policy, funding, and institutional models must shift to support not just the creation, but the ongoing sustainability of open digital technologies.

In parallel, Adriana Groh joined the “Capacity Building” track for a session on “National Responsibility for Fundamental Technologies With Open Source.” alongside Maik Außendorf (former member of the German Parliament), Frederik Blachetta, and Dominik Lawetzky (PwC). She shared the origins of the Sovereign Tech Fund and the conversations that led to its establishment, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how Germany is creating mechanisms to take long-term responsibility for foundational digital infrastructure.

The side events provided smaller, focused gatherings that sparked deeper dialogue. In the engaged discussions, participants brought valuable input and many left with new questions, especially around how to build the case for strategic investements into the open source ecosystem within their own governments, proving that the momentum for participation in our digital infrastructure is growing.

Maintaining open source, growing communities, and investing in the next generation are essential to building a resilient digital future. Collaboration across borders is the only way to keep that future open, fair, and sovereign.

Special thanks to our expert delegation for their invaluable insights, to Michael Winser and Alpha-Omega for their support, to Omar Moshine and his team at the UN for convening so many key participants, and to PwC Germany and RISE for hosting the side events.