White House finalizes federal source code sharing policy
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By improving agency access to custom software developed by or for the federal government, the Federal Source Code policy will help reduce duplicative software purchases and promote innovation.
The White House reaffirmed its commitment to efficiency, transparency and innovation with the release of long-anticipated guidelines aimed at improving agency sharing of federally developed software source code.
The memo, noted in an Aug. 8 blog post by Federal CIO Tony Scott, also incorporates a pilot program to release some custom-developed code used by federal agencies to the public. Scott is also looking to agencies for more public releases beyond the pilot. Additionally, the Office of Management and Budget will also use a new website called Code.gov to make access to code even easier.
Scott noted that the federal government has been sharing code for some time, including the code for the White House's "We the People" petition platform, the Vet.gov site hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the code for the Data.gov website. Now Scott is taking these established best practices governmentwide.
The new document follows the March 2016 release of a draft policy that spelled out what agencies must do before acquiring any custom-developed code and the process they must follow for releasing open source code.
The goal of making federal source code more accessible is to increase sharing and reduce costs of duplicative software purchases, Scott said. With open source, he said, the federal government should remain technologically neutral and ensure IT investments remain "merit-based," adding the amount of available federal open source software will grow.
Overall, the policy calls for a pilot program in which agencies that commission new custom software open 20 percent of their custom code for the duration of the pilot (three years) so that enough data can be collected to gauge the performance of the pilot.
"Agencies are strongly encouraged to release as much custom-developed code as possible to further the Federal Government’s commitment to transparency, participation, and collaboration," according to the policy.
The policy also calls for federal agencies to apply a three-step test when acquiring software, to determine if an existing federal or commercial solution can do the job before turning to new custom software.
Not all code is eligible for sharing. The policy notes that some source code is restricted by patent or export controls or could potentially compromise national security or private information. There is also an exemption under which the federal CIO can restrict sharing because it is in "the national interest" to do so. OMB is required under the policy to justify any software that is exempted from the open source rules.
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