Federal Source Code Toolkit

By Code.gov w/ support from federal agency members

Description:

This is a government-wide project facilitated by the Code.gov team to produce “how to” documentation pertaining to federal source code and open source software (OSS). It provides guidance to agencies for creating and maintaining federal source code inventories and open source repositories.

Our goal is to have this repository be a resource for federal agency program managers and developers for creating informative source code inventories and manage open source projects. In this repository, we provide content and examples for learning and taking advantage of modern software development practices that are currently possible and in use at federal agencies today.

Along with agency requests for guidance, we initially conducted background research that urged us to begin this effort.

• Harvard Engagement Report
• Code.gov UX study
• Blog (about the UX study)

Toolkit Audience

Code.gov has two primary audiences.

• Federal program manager - This person performs or oversees coding activities in his/her unit and may be responsible for implementing the Federal Source Code Policy (FSCP) at the agency. Providing source code and open source projects is one way to solicit help on projects and to provide coding products to the public.
• Developer - This person is in the government or public more generally and wishes to interact with government source code through an open source project. Historically, we engaged developers through live coding events (e.g., Hackathons) and individuals sought us out because they wanted to learn more about government programs with Open Tasks. Using Open Tasks is one way the public can engage with its government and perform a civic duty.

Audience Specific Content

Toolkit content is arranged by audience member. We recognize there is some overlap and it may be beneficial for the reader to peruse all content.

Federal program managers

• FSCP implementation

  • Recognizing your agency’s responsibility with source code
  • Creating an agency source code policy
  • Updating acquisition language to capture new custom code
  • Curating a source code inventory
  • TBD - docs in code-gov repo

• OSS technology

  • Understanding OSS - definition and federal government’s history w/ OSS
  • Determining when to use and migrate to OSS
  • Moving from closed to open source
  • Considering security implications with OSS

Developers

• Choosing open source technologies
• Assessing code quality before going open source
• Documenting repositories
• Running projects locally
• Managing repository code issues
• Setting up source code automation
• Running static code scanning
• Building a community
• Creating project metrics

Contributing:

We welcome all contributions: issues are good, PRs are better. Check out our contributing guidelines for specifics.

License:

This is a federal government project with all content, code, and artifacts subject to Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 Universal or “No Rights Reserved.” For more information, see our license.

Questions?

If you have questions, please contact us: open an issue in this repo or send an email to code@gsa.gov.