Join us at the Government Summit for a day of discussions, presentations, collaboration and inspiration with some short keynotes, facilitated panel discussions, short presentations, breakout sessions and workshops to help us connect and consolidate more collaboration between organisations across the sector.
We have some great panelists and speakers lined up for the day, the full schedule will be finalised soon but for now we can confirm the speakers and sessions outlined below.
Teun van der Vorm: The Struggle for Digital Sovereignty in Government
Teun van der Vorm is the General Director (Algemeen Directeur) of the Dienst ICT Uitvoering (DICTU), which is the IT service provider for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and other government organizations.
Sachiko Muto
Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe and a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then as CEO. Sachiko has degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics; she received her doctorate in standardisation policy from TU Delft.
Panel discussion: “If digital sovereignty depends on open source, who is responsible for sustaining the ecosystems behind it?”
Panel chair: Sachiko Mutto, Chair of OpenForum Europe, Senior Researcher RISE Sweden
Panelists include:
- Teun van der Vorm, General Director, DICTU
- Gina Plat, Open Source Program Office BZK
- Frank Karlitschek, NextCloud
- t.b.c. European Commission
Panel discussion: “Can local government build and sustain the digital commons it needs?”
Panel chair: Bert Boerland, Chair Dutch Drupal Association
Panelists include:
- Phil Rumens, Principal Technologist, GDS Local
- Mike Gifford, Civic Actions
- Justine Pocock, Chicken
- Will Callaghan, LocalGov Drupal
Session: LocalGov Drupal, nurturing grass roots collaboration and contribution in the UK and Ireland
Speakers: Will Callagham, Finn Lewis LocalGov Drupal
In the UK LocalGov Drupal has grown from two councils sharing a Drupal codebase to 70 councils actively collaborating, funding, maintaining and developing a growing distribution to keep control of their web publishing needs. This session will include a brief history, how we scaled, how we established the co-owned Open Digital Co-operative to sustain and grow the community and codebase and where we want to go next.
Session: The Accessible Digital Commons: Aligning Government Procurement to Sustain Open Source
Speaker: Mike Gifford, Civic Actions
About 25% of the population lives with a disability, meaning accessibility isn't an edge case—it’s a fundamental baseline for quality government services. Yet, accessibility within open source is often drastically under-resourced. Using recent Lighthouse scan data from across EU government websites, this 20-minute talk will highlight where we are currently falling short and why governments must treat open source as a critical "digital commons." We will explore how we can align incentives—specifically through smart government procurement and the role of project managers—to fund accessibility, sustain the ecosystem, and empower people with disabilities to actively collaborate in fixing the tools we all use.
Session: Fear of the dark, vanity and other emotions when you lose control over your content.
Speaker: Hreinn Valgerðar Hreinsson, City of Reykjavik
Hreinn has been leading web development for the City of Reykjavik for 25 years and things are changing fast. Going from tabula rasa to full blown 24/7 service centre that is now the most important organism in city services, we are now losing users to AI platforms. The focus of the session will be how we are striving to understand AI and LLMs and how they change the game and user behavior.
- How can we sure that AI platform give accurate answers to questions about our service?
- Is there a way to monitor those platforms with some quality control?
- Do we actually know what answers they are giving, or even to how many users?
- What can we do on our side to maximize our impact on the outcomes of AI platforms?
Session: From business case to live service: Luton’s journey to LocalGov Drupal
Speaker: Jayvik Patel, Luton Council
A case study on how Luton moved to LocalGov Drupal, why we moved (drivers, challenges), procurement and governance approach, building the right team (DDaT, content, suppliers), lessons learned and what we’d do differently next time.
Session: Anyone for an Open Source committee management system?
Speaker: Justine Pocock, Chicken
Quorum is an open-source committee management system being built collaboratively by the UK LocalGov Drupal community, with Hammersmith & Fulham Council as lead funder. It will handle the full meeting lifecycle: agenda creation, document management, workflow approvals, public publication, and compiled PDF packs — all built in Drupal, on infrastructure councils already own.
This session will explain the model: how co-funded, community-owned tools can replace expensive proprietary systems, why committee management is a solvable problem for Drupal, and what we've learned from discovery research with multiple UK councils so far.
Lightening Talks
Short high-energy presentations, less than 5 minutes, on a variety of topics to inspire, inform, challenge and stimulate your thoughts before break-out sessions.
- LocalGov Drupal France, Greg Harvey, Code Enigma
- LocalGov Drupal Austria, Nico Grienauer, Acolono
- Your talk here?
We are open to proposals for lightning talks in advance or on the day, so if you are interested, please do get in touch and propose a lightning talk to inspire people and get the conversations going.
Unconference break-out sessions and workshops
We will finish the day with smaller unconference-style discussion groups - rounding off the day with some facilitated discussions and workshops on a range of topics, chosen by those present based on the sessions and discussions earlier in the day. This is a time to firm up ideas, strengthen connections and make future plans to keep the conversations going and establish ongoing collaborations.
