Barcelona strengthens its international leadership in open technologies at the United Nations Open Source Week
Barcelona played a leading role at the United Nations Open Source Week held in New York, a key global gathering focused on open technologies, democratic innovation, and digital public goods.
A highlight of the week was the signing of a collaboration agreement between the City of New York and the Decidim platform to jointly promote democratic participation through open-source technologies. The agreement emerged after a two-hour meeting with the Civic Engagement Commission of New York, where both cities exchanged experiences on participatory budgeting and other citizen engagement practices—New York is already using Decidim for some of its democratic processes.
Barcelona and Decidim also participated in a high-level meeting with the Digital Public Goods Alliance, which recognized Decidim as a global digital public good in 2022. This year, the alliance welcomed new additions like Mastodon and Docs, backed by the French and German governments.
On 18 June, the focus shifted entirely to the “OSPOs for Good” track, dedicated to scaling and implementing Open Source Program Offices across governments, academia, and civil society interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu+4un.org+4dig.watch+4.
Key highlights included:
● Institutional collaborations: showcases on initiatives such as the France–Germany open stack alliance and the Sovereign Tech Fund, which supports critical open-source digital infrastructure un.org.
● AI & open source: sessions exploring how OSPOs can steer open, transparent, and ethical development of AI.
● Best-practice exchange: sharing governance models, talent engagement frameworks, funding strategies, and sustainability programs.
Barcelona’s Decidim presence offered valuable insights into establishing and managing an OSPO rooted in public governance and community empowerment.
In the panel “Digital Public Goods as Infrastructure”, Decidim shared Barcelona’s approach to fostering open technologies guided by principles such as People First and Open Source First, emphasizing the need for public funding, community support, and democratic governance.
A significant announcement also came from the Mozilla Foundation, which confirmed that its global event, MozFest, will be held in Barcelona in early November. It will be coordinated with DecidimFest under a new joint initiative: the Open Tech Week, a week dedicated to open digital technologies in the city.
To cap off the week, Barcelona was invited by the United Nations to become the first city in the world to endorse the UN Open Source Principles, joining a growing network of organizations committed to ethical, transparent, and collaborative digital infrastructures.
Barcelona continues to lead globally in digital rights, open-source technologies, and democratic innovation.
