President Obama came to office with the promise of change. His administration has pledged to create an environment of openness and participation. Some have already called him the “open source president” such as consultant and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos. There’s no better time than now. Transparency builds trust. Participation solves problems.

Open Source for America (OSFA) has announced a report card scoring the openness of federal agencies and departments! Today marks the six-month anniversary of the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive, a big step towards greater transparency, collaboration, and participation in government.

Not from The 451 Group, unfortunately, but from Sun’s chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy, who told the BBC he has been asked by the new administration to prepare a paper on how the use of open source software within government can improve both security and the cost-effective use of technology.

Open source software in government was the topic on the Linux blogs this week, particularly President Obama's request that Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy prepare a paper on how the U.S. government can use open source technologies.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has issued a statement praising President Obama for bringing a culture of inclusion and transparency to the United States government. Whitehurst also takes the opportunity to encourage broader open source adoption.

Open source is answering the call at government agencies on all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Why?

The US government still hasn't gotten the message. President Obama and his administration are blocking release of the full text of ACTA. They don't want the public to know what the negotiators are up to, because they know we wouldn't stand for it.

The Liberal Democrats have hit out at the government's failure to use more open source software, three years after it pledged to avoid 'lock-in' to proprietary systems. The government published a policy document, 'Open Source Software: use within UK government' in 2004, promising to consider open source alongside proprietary products in IT procurements...

Recently Glyn Moody and Richard Steel, who is both the president of SocITM (the Society of local government IT Managers) and CIO of the London Borough of Newham, had a minor spat across their respective blogs at ComputerWorld, provoked by Steel's response to to the UK government's newly announced policy for the adoption and promotion of open source - Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Gover