An Open Letter to All European Ministers
Esteemed Ministers,
On 27 May the Competitiveness Council in Brussels announced a European decision to achieve Open Access to all scientific research data by 2020. This decision, and the implementing European framework programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020, will be recognized by future generations as the first serious step toward the creation of a prosperous world at peace. With this one decision Europe is turning away from centuries of war and waste; away from scientific reductionism, away from corporate ownership of public knowledge, away from legal barriers to innovation, and away from government neglect of the public interest.
Under the presidency of Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker, the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation have created a new era, of open intelligence and open innovation with open integrity. As someone who has fought in the trenches for twenty-five years in favor of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and who most recently published The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust itemizing over 60 “opens” that must be developed simultaneously if Open Access and Horizon 2020 are to achieve their intended objectives, I humbly and respectfully urge all Ministers – without exception – to immediately call for the creation of a European Open Source Agency (EOSA). My 8 October 2015 proposal of an American Open Source Agency (AOSA) is freely available online for consideration as a model. I also commend to each Minister the P2P Foundation Wiki Category:Open Source Everything as a starting point for reflection.
For a quarter century I have labored to redirect secret intelligence away from its symbiotic relationship to war and waste, and toward a more open posture favoring peace and prosperity. I could never have imagined that Europe would make a decision so fundamental, so transformative, that it makes possible the achievement of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) within a decade, two at most. Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE), when combined with holistic analytics and true cost economics as I have championed for so many years, is documented as being faster, better, and cheaper than proprietary engineering – one tenth the time, ten times more resilience and sustainability, one tenth the cost.
Bearing in mind that until September the President of the UN General Assembly is a Danish diplomat, and that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is under the leadership of a Norwegian diplomat, I urge all Ministers to consider my recent proposal of a Nordic Interagency Intelligence Centre and network as a starting point for considering a European Union/NATO Interagency Intelligence Centre while asking the UN General Assembly to take action on my proposed United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) as the global facilitator for creating a prosperous world at peace.
One final note: three corporations in particular will be deeply affected by this government decision: Bloomberg, Elsevier, and Thomson Reuters. I have tried for many years to tell all three companies this day was coming, and most recently offered Thomson Reuters a specific proposal. In my view, now that the EU has made such an important decision, these three companies should be invited to join a working group that helps design a profitable migration path for all organizations – academic, commercial, governmental, and non-profit – whose knowledge in the aggregate will comprise a new functional World Brain.
Very respectfully,
Robert David Steele
CEO (pro bono), Earth Intelligence Network (501c3)
Blog Publisher, Open Source Everything for the 21st Century
