White House continues push to open source federal code

The White House on Thursday issued a draft policy for public comment that would support making computer code used by federal agencies open source.

It's part of an on-going effort by the Obama administration to make government computer systems more efficient both by using open source programs and by releasing code written by government agencies both inside and outside the government to use.

U.S. chief information officer Tony Scott says the move will save taxpayer dollars and encourage more collaboration between agencies.

"This policy will require new software developed specifically for or by the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across Federal agencies," he said in a blog post.

A portion of that code must be open source.

Open source software is computer code that can be freely used, modified and shared by anyone who wants to use it. Several widely-used programs are open source, including the Unix and Linux operating systems, the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Apache web server software.

"By harnessing 21st century technology and innovation, we’ve found new ways to tap into the collective knowledge of the American people and make it easier to share data, improve tools and services, and return value to taxpayers," Scott wrote.

He gave several examples of government open source programs already in use. The included an open source tool from the Consumer Financial Protection to find free housing counselors for those struggling to pay their mortgages or rent, a resource site for survivors of sexual assault from NotAlone.gov and a site for families looking at colleges called College Scorecard.

The policy is part of The White House's Second Open Government National Action Plan launched in 2014.

The unveiling of the policy arrives as President Obama travels to Austin on Friday for the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, where he will deliver the event's keynote address.

The community of coders who work on open source projects was buzzing Thursday over the news, said Rikki Endsley, community manager for Opensource.com, an open source technology site supported by Red Hat, an open source tech company in Raleigh, NC.

She was impressed that the White House was tapping into the knowledge of the open source community by opening up discussion on GitHub, a software collaboration site popular with open source coders.

“It’s too early to judge the success of the program but it’s definitely exciting to see that conversation progressing,” she said.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.