Tag Archives: governments

DIYA. GOVERNMENT IN YOUR SMARTPHONE

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      “Diya ” short for “Derzhava I Ya”, or government and me, is a web portal and mobile application of the same name, which are part of the project “Government in a smartphone” of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. This app was made to make the life of Ukrainian people much easier. No more worries about a forgotten ID or driver’s license. Everything is always on you in your personal smartphone! Nevertheless, this app differs from just pictures of documents people take. Each document has its own QR code for requested check-ins.

“According to statistics, only 9% of people in our country use government services online. This is a very small amount though. 91% of Ukrainians now do not use online tools to interact with the government. Why? The first reason is digital literacy. This is what today is the basis of our country’s competitiveness in the world. And this is a challenge that we also accept, ” the Prime Minister said. Not to mention, DIYA provides a special IT course for brand-new users who are not familiar with the technology.

 

This app gives an opportunity to all the Ukrainians to receive services from the government online instead of standing in line for hours to the public offices. It means that now there is a possibility to obtain specific certificates, extracts, and data from various state agencies and registries, submit packages of documents to initiate various processes: opening/closing a private enterprise, processing unemployment benefits, etc. The task of Diya is to make the process of providing these services fast, transparent, and save people from unnecessary bureaucracy.

“Diya” also stores electronic copies of such documents as a foreign passport, ID card, student ID card, driver’s license, technical passport. They are full-fledged copies of plastic originals.

Now in Ukraine, if necessary, all the documents can be presented directly from the smartphone screen. Moreover, DIYA documents are as legitimate as real ones, for example, now citizens are simply able to confirm the ownership of the car and the right to drive it by showing the chosen document in the application. And this is really convenient because it eliminates the need to carry plastic documents with you, which significantly reduces the risk of their loss. The main thing is not to forget to take your smartphone with you.

In order to use the mobile app, you need to download it from the Google Play Market and Apple Store. After starting it, you will have to log in. You can do this using BankID from PrivatBank or Monobank. And that is All. The application itself will pull up your documents, which are available for display in electronic form.

 

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Transition to open source, Poland government is open-source now, what ?

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The Secrets of Successful Open Source Business Models

© Image inserted from Medium – medium.com

 

It’s not just a click bait, maybe Poland not yet, but now a day we see more companies, as well as governments, choose open source.

 

A month ago Google, open-sourced its pre-trained models and fine-tuning code for Big Transfer (BiT), And Microsoft last weeks Akri project, NSA Ghidra from a tool that kept from the public to open source, the examples piling up weekly, and we hear daily companies in big bold title Announcing new projects and introducing with a big welcoming applause as OPEN SOURCE.

 

Back in the late ’90s, when the Open Source Initiative was born, the idea of releasing source code would have been considered a bad strategy for technology companies because proprietary software was the standard and companies were doing everything they could to protect their software, in 2020 The concept of open source has changed dramatically and is now mainstream.

 

Not only high-profile acquisitions and investments in open source projects but also tech giants like Google and Facebook have placed importance on open source to attract new product innovations and build a huge developer community. Flutter vs React Native, PyTorch vs Tensorflow, Kubernetes, etc. are the best examples.

 

Ghidra, it’s not every day we see Government bureaus making their projects open source, and it was far away from my imagination to see and use the spy agencies program on my personal computer. NSA started back in 2014 to make a tool called “Niagarafiles (Nifi),” first open-source not only that but they were very proudly put “NSA Releases First in Series of Software Products to Open Source Community” as the title. And after that in the 2019 tool for cracking software or some call it reverse engineering tools were open to the public.

 

“NSA views on releasing Ghidra as a kind of recruiting strategy, making it easier for new hires to enter the NSA at a higher level or for cleared contractors to lend their expertise without needing to first come up to speed on the tool.” Said NSA cybersecurity adviser Rob Joyce

 

“The significance is that the product can be improved by the community instead of being solely funded by the NSA. The development of such a product is costly, and even the NSA doesn’t have unlimited funds. It’ll be a great demonstration of the value of open-sourcing internally developed projects.” Rob Graham, consultant, and owner at Errata Security. told Business Insider in a Twitter DM.

 

community of contributors from all over the world who share an interest in meeting a common need, ranging from minor projects to huge developments, which they carry out using a high-performance collaborative development environment (CDE).

© Image inserted from Nexumoja – www.nexumoja.org

 

Companies and governments use open source because they understand even with big pockets are still highly costly, another aspect of Catalyst For Continuous Innovation, as the number of employees from a wide range of companies and backgrounds increases, the scope of technology innovation coverage will expand exponentially. Other than that Helps Build A Rich Developer Community, If a company doesn’t have open source in its DNA, it will be a big challenge to build a good relationship with the developer community. If you’re a big company like Microsoft, IBM, or Google, there are always a lot of people watching you. Everyone can read and criticize your code. Also, being open source means being open and transparent about release cycles and roadmaps, which takes a lot of effort and initiative.

 

And finally operating in open source requires companies to be leading members in how technology is built and how it evolves. This is achieved through collaboration and contribution to open-source software. Companies whose teams lead open source projects gain greater insight into how the technology is being built, where it is going, and why.

 

Throughout my personal opinion and experience, even companies and some Government bureaus chose open source but still some other business or academic institution, they are behind to take advantage of open source, live example during pandemic many universities rush their IT teams to build a fully online experience for the students. Most universities used 3rd party and hiring more developers. The greatest solution comes to mind what if a big community gathers to make an open-source CMS and LMS especially for an academic institution, wouldn’t be a great and powerful idea?

 

 

Resource:

Open Source: Advantages of Open Source Software

Microsoft’s turns over new ‘leaf’ with open source Akri

The NSA publicly released a tool for cracking software

NSA releases Ghidra, a free software reverse engineering toolkit

Why Do Large Companies Open Source Their Tech?

Announcing Akri, an open source project for building a connected edge with Kubernetes

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