Policies supporting open source development can make it easier for civil servants to convince their peers that they should engage. These policies can take many forms, from laws to internal guidance. Clearer and more specific policies will be more likely to persuade skeptics.
Some examples (non-exhaustive list):
- Bulgarian electronic governance law (in Bulgarian), requiring software developed through public contracts to be open source (English news article)
- UNESCO endorsement, an example of a general positive endorsement
- UK Service Manual: Making source code open and reusable
- Swedish Agency for Digital Government internal software development policy (in Swedish), requiring software to be open source and specifies which licenses to use
How to find policies for your country
- Open Source Software Country Intelligence from the Open Source Observatory contains details of policies per country
- Government Open Source Software Policies from the Center for Strategic and International Studies lists over 600 policies