This collaborative, an entirely voluntary undertaking not affiliated with any professional organization or private sector company, is tasked with encouraging the sharing, at no cost, of computer code, developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed.

The GOCC has established a code repository at www.gocc.gov that is accessible by signatories of the GOCC Agreement for code deposit and withdrawal. Certain portions of the site are also accessible by entities that are Observers but have not yet signed the Agreement. In addition, there is a public section available to the general public. Code deposited in the repository will be code sharable within the government sector. In addition to code sharing, the repository will support collaboration among government entities in the areas of software development, best practices and potential solutions to government business problems.

As a true demonstration of collaboration, the following highlights members’ and observers’ contributions to make the GOCC a reality:

• New York’s Attorney General Office: Listserve for the GOCC
• Secretary of State of Rhode Island: Application development for the gocc.gov repository
• University of Rhode Island: gocc.gov repository hosting
• Massachusetts: Agreement and Legal framework development; meeting facilitator; gocc.gov repository hardware
• MIT and Harvard: Continued academic support and guidance; donation of code
• Every signatory has devoted hours of their professional and personal time to make the GOCC a viable entity.

Given the difficult economic climate, the GOCC members felt that the creation of the Collaborative was one avenue to help lower cost within the IT Community of government entities and to foster innovation through the engagement of the largest possible IT resources available. By sharing their various governments’ technology investments with other like entities, GOCC participants expect to reap continual benefits of the wider community’s innovation and improvement to the shared product.

The organizing meeting of the GOCC was sponsored in December 2003, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in conjunction with Harvard University and MIT. The morning session at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government was conducted by Professor L. Jean Camp, who presented an excellent tutorial on the various license options available to code sharers. Sparing every expense, the attendees took advantage of the Commonwealth’s excellent public transportation system and use the MBTA’s Red Line to make the transition to MIT for the afternoon program.

The afternoon session at MIT included an audio bridge for those folks that could not attend in person. The genesis of the collaborative was vetted and launched through a discussion facilitated by Dan Greenwood of MIT’s E-Commerce Architecture Program. Dan has been a significant contributor to this initiative from inception. Through a series of subsequent audio conferences, the group agreed to the operating rules for the collaborative and the repository, the governance and officer structure and the actual announcement process. Highlights include the following:

• The GOCC will be entirely independent and not affiliated with any professional or private sector entity.
• The GOCC will accept no financial or in-kind assistance from any private sector company.
• All initial members will be either municipalities, legal entities of state government, or academic non-profit institutions.
• Four officer positions were established to serve for one year:
  • Chairperson: Peter Quinn, CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
  • Municipality Representative: Mike Wells, CIO, Gloucester, Massachusetts
  • Technical Lead: Jim Willis, CIO, Secretary of State, RI
  • Policy Lead: Patrick McCormick, Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government

The GOCC would like to make special mention of Claudia Boldman, Director of Policy and Architecture, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for her research, facilitation and development of the GOCC organization material and conference calls which has made the GOCC come to life; to Linda Hamel, Legal Counsel, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for the extensive legal research and the development of the GOCC Agreement for consideration by the group, operating tenets and continued good guidance on the licensing issues; Jim Willis, CIO, Secretary of State, Rhode Island, for the code construction for the repository and for facilitating the relationship with the University of RI, who is the host of www.gocc.gov.

For additional information please visit www.gocc.gov. Questions and comments can be directed to the current Chair of the GOCC at peter.j.quinn@state.ma.us.