Drawing on a week at UN Open Source Week 2026, the author extends the 'Roads and Bridges' infrastructure metaphor literally by examining how the US National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) work — mandatory inspections, condition ratings, load postings, a public inventory, formula funding, and post-incident investigations. The core argument is that a decade of voluntary mechanisms (GitHub Sponsors, OSPOs, foundation grants) are the equivalent of Adopt-a-Highway programs: useful but insufficient. The author proposes that governments should procure open source maintenance via service contracts (as Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency does), specifying scope, deliverables, and acceptance criteria. This would create formal records of 'null results' (clean security reviews), produce dated condition profiles across multiple dimensions, and establish a recurring funding model — mirroring how civil engineering departments contract bridge inspection and upkeep rather than relying on corporate sponsorship.
