House passes SHARE IT Act aimed at custom code in government
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By
Natalie Alms
Agencies could save money if they shared such code, lawmakers say.
A bill requiring federal agencies to share their custom code across the government is one step closer to becoming law.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Source Code Harmonization and Reuse in Information Technology Act, or SHARE IT Act, backed by Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y. and William Timmons, R-S.C.
The proposal “mandates that agencies publicly list and share their custom code — allowing solutions to be reused across the government, saving both time and saving important taxpayer dollars,” Langworthy said of the bill last week on the House floor, calling it “a straightforward, practical measure that will improve government efficiency, foster innovation and most importantly save taxpayers money.”
Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., originally introduced the proposal on the Senate side in January before it got a House companion in September. The bill hasn’t passed in the Senate, although the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee did move it out of committee early this year.
The bill requires agencies to ensure that custom code developed by feds or produced under an agency contract is owned by the agency, accessible to other federal employees and available in a repository for other agencies. This type of code may be used for things like government websites, apps or computer models for regulations, the senators behind it say.
The goal is to reap cost savings and efficiencies by sharing the code across agencies. A 2016 policy already instructs agencies to share source code — which agencies can do on code.gov — but the lawmakers behind the proposal say that it's been poorly implemented.
“The full potential of that policy has yet to be realized,” said Langworthy. “Agencies are left operating in silos. This leads to costly duplication, as they pay contractors to recreate solutions that already exist elsewhere within the vast sums of the federal government.”
The proposal would require agencies to make sure their contracts that result in custom software provide the government sufficient rights to share and modify custom code. Agency chief information officers would be in charge of implementation and the federal CIO is tapped with developing guidance and reporting to Congress on implementation under the bill.