White House Releases Federal Source Code Policy To Advance Sharing Across Agencies
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
New policy faces criticism as not going far enough.
The White House has unveiled its Federal Source Code Policy designed to facilitate exchange and reuse of custom-built source code across all federal agencies. The announcement was made in a blog post by Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott, in which he wrote President Obama is committed to a 21st Century digital government, which is driving this new sharing policy.
As President Obama stated in March, 2016, “If we can reconceive of our government so that the interactions and the interplay between private sector, nonprofits, and government are opened up, and we use technology, data, social media in order to join forces around problems, then there’s no problem that we face in this country that is not soluble.”
The Federal Source Code policy reflects feedback from the public comment period and requires all agencies make new, custom-developed source code available for sharing and re-use across all other Federal agencies. As part of the policy, a pilot program requires all agencies to release at least a portion of the new source code to the public and support agencies.
Scott stated code sharing is not a new concept for government, naming several examples of coding already available, and added the point is to take these established best practices government-wide.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget says the federal government spends more than $6 billion annually on software through more than 42,000 transactions, with a significant portion of software used by the government made up of either pre-existing federal technology or commercial technology. The advantages of the new policy come in the cost reduction associated with eliminating duplication of purchases and in the promotion of innovation and collaboration across Federal agencies. And, Scott states, “We can do all of this while remaining consistent with the Federal Government’s long-standing policy of technology neutrality, through which we seek to ensure that Federal investments in IT are merit-based, improve the performance of our government, and create value for the American people.”
Information Week reported the new Federal Source Code Policy is meant to compliment the Digital Government Strategy's Shared Platform approach which enables federal employees to work together, both within and across agencies, to reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information.
According to Next Gov, however, the policy has also been greeting with some criticism, including comments attributed to members of the Homeland Security Department who likened open source code to “Mafia having a copy of all FBI system code” or a “terrorist with access to air traffic control software." These critics also wanted to remove the pilot's 20 percent requirement for shared code.
While DHS subsequently stated those comments were published incorrectly and do not reflect official policy, one columnist for Network World argues the policy does not go far enough. Bryan Lunduke said, “The Federal Source Code policy would be better if it mandated all agency source code be released under a free software license to the public,” and, “This policy seems like a good first step. It's not ideal. The lack of an actual, clear policy around licensing renders many of the potential benefits from this nearly moot. And the fact that only a tiny fraction of the code is planned to be released to the public borders on being ridiculous and short-sighted.”