The National Open Source Innovation Summit in Dublin, Ireland this month (feb2026) was a wonderful gathering of open source tech, policy and research humans each working on solving different yet overlapping problems.

The event started hard-and-fast with Clare Dillon‘s urgent stark real-world reminders of the changing landscape for technology in government, including timely relevant snippets from the week’s news. And after that high-energy start, somehow the event managed to keep that same urgent yet practical focus in every session for the rest of the day.

For me, personally, other highlights included:

• Henry Poole (CEO, CivicActions) described the success of DITAP and how being able to write better procurement contracts helped government buy better software from vendors, reduced costs and helped improve tech+data sovereignty. Henry also noted that CivicActions had open-sourced their DITAP trainings, so that others could also run these trainings.

• Sachiko Muto (Chair, Open Forum Europe) outlined how governments are the largest purchasers of computer software and services. As government use policies and OSPOs to encourage more use of open source software, they reduce costs while also helping solve tech/digital sovereignty and data sovereignty concerns. Lots of other great points raised in a information-dense session – and in our corridor chat afterwards!

• Tony Shannon (Head of Digital Services at Ireland’s Office of the Government Chief Information Officer) detailed the multi-year work in Ireland to move customer-facing government services online, and do so using open source software. His roadmap was a masterclass for taking on such large scale transformative work that I wish more people followed. They didn’t “just” digitally modernize existing process, they also revamped the user experience, reworked internal operational processes, all using iterative “baby step” building blocks that quietly helped build trust as they progressed along.

• Bastien Guerry (Software Heritage) showcased his experiences building support for open source across different parts of the French government, with some brilliantly practical and human tactics.

• Gar Mac Criosta (HSE), Tom Sadler (BBC), Johan Linaker (RISE) and I covered practical lessons learned deploying open source systems into mission-critical government environments – including technical gotchas, policies and human change-management perspectives. We had a wonderfully lively Q+A as well as back/forth interactive discussions across the crowded room, which continued into the corridor outside.

Somehow Clare, Michael, Ciara, Ailbhe and the rest of the NOSIS team managed to fit all this (and lots more!) into one day. Unlike most conferences with different levels of energy in different sessions, this event was all-go, all-high-energy, all-the-way. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, re-invigorated in my own work, and slept well, happy to be reminded that there were so many good people doing good work to solve hard problems that matter to so many in our world.

If you missed the event, I recommend you follow Clare, Michael Meager and Open Ireland Network to learn the date and location for next year’s event. See you there!

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or a health care benefits professional. However, I’ve discovered and used this information for myself successfully, and I have had good trusted friends who are HR professionals with federal government experience review this. There are a lot of “usually” and “it depends on” situations here, so if you have any questions on any of this, please talk with your former supervisor or your former agency’s HR department. This worked for me, so sharing in case it helps others.)

When you lose your job at a company, and your job had medical insurance, you are (usually) allowed to signup for “COBRA” medical coverage. COBRA allows you to continue your existing medical coverage, with no gap in coverage and no new health verification requirements. There are some rules: You need to signup for within 30 days of your last day of employment – and once signed up, you can only remain on COBRA for a total of 18months. Your COBRA payment is more expensive than the medical contributions you had paid while employed, because you are now also paying your employer’s portion of your medical insurance. Depending on your life situation and health insurance offerings in your physical location, COBRA can be a better choice than other health insurance offerings. 

An almost identical situation exists when you lose your job in federal government.

When you lose your job in federal government, and your job had medical insurance, you can (usually) signup for TCC (“Temporary Continuity of Coverage”). Like COBRA, you have 30 days from when you leave federal service to signup for TCC. After that, you have deemed to have waived TCC and cannot revisit.

For the ~270,000 federal employees who left federal service on 30sep2025, the last day of that payroll period is 04oct2025, so your last day to signup for TCC is 04nov2025. In our current reality, lots of federal HR departments have been RIF’d or furloughed by the ongoing federal government shutdown, causing delays all over the place, so if you want to signup for TCC, I would not wait until the last day to apply.

Humans leaving federal service who want to convert from FEHB -> TCC will need to fill in the SF-2809 (click here to get the PDF). The form SF-2809 comes with attached instructions, but these did not apply to my situation, so after lots of asking questions on how to signup for TCC myself, I’m sharing the following notes on what worked for me in case it is helpful for others:

• Box1-8: Name, DOB, social, address, etc.
• Box9: “no” (If you had FEHB as a federal employee, for some reason FEHB does not count as “insurance other than medicare”, so if – like me – FEHB was your only insurance, the answer here is “no”)
• Repeat for each member of your family.
• PartB: Fill in your current FEHB plan name and plan number. Do not leave blank.
• PartC: Fill in your desired FEHB plan name and plan number. I was not changing, so these were the same as PartB. Do not leave these tblank. (Note: TCC does allow you to change plans at this time, unlike COBRA)
• PartD1: “4A” (even though you are still in the 30day-grace-period, you are considered a “former employee”)
• PartD2: “09/30/2025” (even though technically, I’ve been told it should be the end of that paycycle “10/04/2025″…don’t ask!).
• PartE,F,G: Leave blank.
• Sign with wet-ink-on-paper and date (typed-signature not accepted and digital signatures not possible, without your federal PIVcard!)

I then had to send the signed paper form to my agency HR department, who dealt with it as fast as humanly possible during furloughs, RIFs and the govt.shutdown. As of a few days ago, I’m now successfully enrolled into TCC, with no gap in medical coverage. I’m still waiting for USDA NFC to send me my first TCC invoice (this is likely delayed by government shutdown but at least I’m in the system).

Note: It is *not* possible to send this form to FEPBlue or directly to my insurance company (BCBS). These are both private companies, so are open during the government shutdown, so I called them to ask, thinking it might be faster. However, they both said they can only accept TCC enrollments of verified qualified former-fed-employees from the HR department of that agency. Even during federal government shutdown.

Note: The FEPBlue.org website has a bug. When you leave federal service, you have a 30day grace period to enroll in TCC. During that grace period, you can login to FEPBlue and see your medical history, claims in progress, etc. I did this multiple times with no issues – while employed in federal service and while in the 30day-grace-period. However, as soon as FEHB sees that you are registered for TCC, you will lose access to your current/past medical history, claims in progress, etc – all replaced by a banner that says your coverage *will* start on 05nov2025. There is no mention of your current FEHB grace period coverage. In theory, after the start of your TCC coverage on 05nov2025, you can again see your past/current medical history, claims in progress, etc. Until 05nov2025, FEPBlue website thinks that you have not yet started *any* medical coverage with FEPBlue, even though the humans at FEPBlue customer support would confirm on the phone that their inhouse systems show our current coverage was still active during the 30day-grace-period before TCC started. Multiple phone calls with FEPBlue.org support to fix this website went nowhere, so flagging here in case you also hit this and are alarmed.