The Trump administration has cut deep into the federal corps of civic technology experts at a time when agencies are grappling with a new law that requires them to share software code across government.
Experts say recent cuts at the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services and elsewhere could hinder implementation of the “Source Code Harmonization and Reuse In Information Technology Act,” or the SHARE IT Act.
Signed into law late last year, the SHARE IT Act requires agencies to share their custom-developed software code publicly or on a private listing that can be accessed by other agencies.
While agencies, like other enterprise organizations, rely on open source software that underpins many technologies, it’s less common for agencies to publish their code as open source when developing a custom tool. Many agencies lack the tech expertise to implement open source software projects.
However, GSA’s recently shuttered “18F” digital services team was particularly proficient at developing open source software. 18F had a policy of releasing all software in the public domain, with some narrow exceptions.
In 2019, for instance, 18F estimated that a shareable website tool it had helped develop was saving agencies $100,000 per project.
The United States Digital Service also worked with agencies to create open-source tools. The USDS under the Trump administration has been rebranded as the “United States DOGE Service.” It’s unclear to what extent DOGE will maintain any of the previous team’s digital service focus, as many of its staff have departed since Elon Musk took over.
“There’s no resource, with 18F gone and USDS functionally gone, for agencies to draw on to help comply with this law,” Waldo Jaquith, a technologist and former government official who served at 18F, said in an interview.
The goal of the SHARE It Act is to avoid lengthy, costly and duplicative software development projects by sharing source code across agencies. Many civic tech experts also say releasing taxpayer-funded source code is in the public interest.
While 18F’s small team of technical advisors wouldn’t have been involved in every software project across government, tech experts say it provided an important example for how agencies can develop open source software.
“I don’t think 18F was every going to make a meaningful dent with their individual partner agencies in the amount of open source that gets published, compared to what’s required,” Jaquith said. “But the role they would have played in establishing how to do it may be irreplaceable.”
The SHARE It Act was first introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-Mich.). Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“The administration’s sweeping cuts risk derailing the implementation of critical legislation aimed at improving governmentwide efficiency, like the SHARE IT Act, and undermining essential programs across GSA and other agencies,” an aide to Peters told Federal News Network.
‘North star’ for open source
The SHARE IT Act codifies many open-source requirements from a “Federal Source Code Policy” issued in 2016 under the first Trump administration. The policy directed agencies to inventory their custom-developed code and make it available on Code.gov.
Joe Castle, former director of Code.gov and the federal Open Source Program Office, said science-focused agencies, like NASA and the Energy Department’s labs, had been prolific publishers of open source code.
But the 2016 policy required all agencies to release at least 20% of new, custom-developed code as open source software. Castle said it was a major culture shift for agencies, but GSA’s 18F team — established in 2014 — was instrumental in setting an example.
“What was awesome about 18F was their ‘default to open’ approach,” Castle said. “It’s the north star for the rest of the agencies. It was easier for me to get things done, because I could point to them. They are GSA employees, they are developers, and they are defaulting to open, so it can be done.”
Jaquith pointed to 18F’s contribution to a new, open-source case management system for the United States Tax Court.
Jaquith said the development of the cloud-based system cost a few million dollars, a relatively small amount compared to other government software development projects. He said the tax court system has helped inform estimates for other major technology projects, including a proposed case management system for the U.S. courts to replace the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service.
“The value of building the software was not just to the agency that needed it, but by publishing it, they were able to establish a standard for how much it should cost or how long it should take to build,” Jaquith said.
While momentum behind the 2016 Federal Source Code Policy’s open source efforts had slowed by 2020, the creation of Code.gov was a key legacy that created central hub for federal open source projects. But recently, Code.gov began redirecting to a Digital.gov, a webpage that summarizes the 2016 policy. It’s unclear what happened to the source code repository that was previously maintained at Code.gov.
GSA did not respond to questions by press time about the agency’s plans to support federal implementation of the SHARE IT Act, as well as its plans for Code.gov.
With the SHARE IT Act now law, agencies have until mid-July to begin sharing their custom code somewhere, whether it’s Code.gov, an open-source tool like Git, or a commercial platform like GitHub or Bitbucket.
But with teams like 18F gone, agencies may have to go elsewhere for expertise in digital services and open source software.
“I love the fact that there’s a law that says the government has to do these things,” Castle said. “I think it becomes more of a normal operating procedure. That’s my hope. The law just gives it a little bit of push to get agencies to consider that. It’s here to stay, but it’s just how long it takes. 18F was ahead of their time and hopefully all the agencies now will continue to publish more.”
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