Collaboration project will share code for government apps
The District of Columbia and nonprofit groups debut the Civic Commons organization to enable federal, state and local government to share open-source code.
Federal, state and local government agencies are being invited to share and develop computer code to save money and avoid duplication via a new Civic Commons collaboration project that debuted today.
The Civic Commons Web site has published code for the Federal Register and promises to release open-source code soon for the White House’s IT Dashboard. Other applications available include open source code for a bus schedule system, address repository and legislation tracking system, officials said.
The nonprofit Civic Commons program is being sponsored by the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and by the nonprofit organizations Code for America and OpenPlans that promote open-source development.
More than a dozen organizations, including the White House, have either delivered code or promised to do so, officials said.
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"Not only will other jurisdictions benefit from the public release of these applications, we will benefit from external individuals and organizations contributing to the codebase and sharing exciting and innovative applications they have created,” Sivak added.
Other available applications include the Master Address Repository from the city of San Francisco and the Open Legislature software from the New York Legislature.
The IT Dashboard, posted on the White House website, monitors schedule performance and cost performance, and includes a human analysis factor. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has pledged to make it available as open source code to the Civic Commons project, according to the news release.
The informational wiki OpenMuni.org, developed by OpenPlans and Code for America, also is part of the Civic Commons project.