“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was fortunate to be born in the digital era. We’ve been able to rethink many of the practices that make financial products confusing to consumers and certain regulations burdensome for businesses. We’ve also been able to launch the CFPB with a state-of-the-art technical infrastructure that’s more stable and more cost-effective than an equivalent system was just ten years ago.

Good internal technology policies can help, especially the policy that governs our use of software source code.

Some software lets users modify its source code, so that they can tweak the code to achieve their own goals if the software doesn’t specifically do what users want. Source code that can be freely modified and redistributed is known as “open-source software,” and it has been instrumental to the CFPB’s innovation efforts for a few reasons:

• It is usually very easy to acquire, as there are no ongoing licensing fees. Just pay once, and the product is yours.

• It keeps our data open. If we decide one day to move our web site to another platform, we don’t have to worry about whether the current platform is going to keep us from exporting all of our data. (Only some proprietary software keeps its data open, but all open source software does so.)

• It lets us use tailor-made tools without having to build those tools from scratch. This lets us do things that nobody else has ever done, and do them quickly.

Until recently, the federal government was hesitant to adopt open-source software due to a perceived ambiguity around its legal status as a commercial good. In 2009, however, the Department of Defense made it clear that open-source software products are on equal footing with their proprietary counterparts.

We agree, and the first section of our source code policy is unequivocal:

We use open-source software, and we do so because it helps us fulfill our mission.

Open-source software works because it enables people from around the world to share their contributions with each other. The CFPB has benefited tremendously from other people’s efforts, so it’s only right that we give back to the community by sharing our work with others.

This brings us to the second part of our policy:

When we build our own software or contract with a third party to build it for us, we will share the code with the public at no charge. 

Exceptions will be made when source code exposes sensitive details that would put the Bureau at risk for security breaches; but we believe that, in general, hiding source code does not make the software safer.

2012 CFPB Source Code Policy

Public.Resource.Org spent $7,414.26 buying privately-produced technical public safety standards that have been incorporated into U.S. federal law. These public safety standards govern and protect a wide range of activity, from how bicycle helmets are constructed to how to test for lead in water to the safety characteristics of hearing aids and protective footwear. We have started copying those 73 standards despite the fact they are festooned with copyright warnings, shrinkwrap agreements, and other dire warnings. The reason we are making those copies is because citizens have the right to read and speak the laws that we are required to obey and which are critical to the public safety.

more here: Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws

Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws – Boing Boing.

In a Whitehouse blog post the announcement was made today snip:

“For nearly three years, Todd has served as CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was a hugely energetic force for positive change. He led the successful execution of an array of breakthrough initiatives, including the creation of HealthCare.gov, the first website to provide consumers with a comprehensive inventory of public and private health insurance plans available across the Nation by zip code in a single, easy-to-use tool.

On his first full day in office, President Obama created the position of “Chief Technology Officer” to help modernize a Federal government relying too heavily on 20^th century technology, and to better use technological tools to address a wide range of national challenges. In his role as U.S. CTO, Todd will continue the work of Aneesh Chopra, the Nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, who stepped down last month after an inspired and productive three years on the job.

The U.S. CTO’s office is situated here within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where Todd will work closely with U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Telecommunications Tom Power.  Tom will perform the duties of OSTP’s Associate Director for Technology—a position previously held by Chopra in conjunction with his role as U.S. CTO—while a search is conducted for a permanent replacement.”

Congrats to Todd!

Open Source for America applauds OMB’s effort to increase the efficiency of the Federal IT budget through the principles of commoditization, reuse, sharing, and collaboration described in the draft IT Shared Services Policy distributed on December 8th, 2011. These principles are also the hallmarks of open source software, and while there is no explicit mention of open source in the plan at this time, we believe that there should be. We see a unique opportunity for open source to improve the effectiveness of Shared First.

“A number of barriers exist which have prevented the broader adoption of shared IT services. Lack of information sharing among the Federal agencies, budgetary restrictions, acquisition issues, and other factors have all contributed to a culture in which proprietary, specialized systems are the norm.”

We could not agree more. We believe that OMB should explicitly mention open source as a recommended method for overcoming these barriers. Open source software itself, of course, can reduce costs and ease acquisition challenges. We can assume that many agencies will naturally use open source software as part of their Shared First implementation.

Embracing the open source approach, though, and using it to encourage sharing between agencies, departments, other governments, and the general public is the purest expression of the goals of the Shared First policy. Open source excels at the Shared First Design Goals, including visibility, commoditization, reusability, extensibility, and standardization, and we believe it should be actively and explicitly encouraged by the policy.

Much of the draft is concerned with the sharing of existing infrastructure, and is in this way very similar to the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative. As the scope of the Shared First policy is much broader than the FDCCI, and concerns itself with LoB information systems and applications, we would like OMB to consider expanding the scope of the mandate to include the sharing of development resources, and not just their ongoing operations and maintenance.

As the policy encourages agencies to “move up the stack,” and share ever-more complex layers of their information systems, agencies will need to perform more customization to meet their specific mission needs. If they were to use proprietary commercial offerings or systems developed for just one agency, this can become very difficult and very expensive.

If agencies were to instead employ open source software, or better still: share their taxpayer-funded software under an open source license, customization would become easier, and the need for customization would be reduced, owing to the natural modularity of open source projects.

In the process, agencies would be making themselves available to contributions and improvements from their partner agencies as well as state and local governments who also have a use for that same software. Certainly, it is possible to share complex application software amongst agencies without open source software. We believe, however, that releasing software under an open source license can simplify this process, and simultaneously encourage sharing among other state and local governments, and the private sector as well. This approach has already been successful at NASA and the National Institutes for Health. We see no reason why other agencies cannot realize the same benefits.

“Open source is… the most concrete form of civic participation.”

— Macon Phillips, White House New Media Director

An excellent example of this is the effort currently underway at the EPA to develop a shared management system for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses, one of the goals of the President’s National Action Plan under the Open Government Initiative. Almost as soon as the FOIA project was announced, it became clear that many citizens, state and local governments were interested in developing this platform alongside the EPA.

Should this project succeed, there would be a single, common platform for handling FOIA responses that would be freely available to the 93 agencies required to perform this task. Rather than 93 purpose-built systems, agencies could take advantage of each other’s innovation, the innovation of the private sector, and the innovation of thousands of state, local, municipal, and tribal governments who have their own Freedom of Information requirements.

Unlike working with proprietary FOI software, the number of agency-specific customizations would be drastically reduced, and since customizations can be contributed back to the main project, the ongoing maintenance burden of these customizations would be reduced, as well.

This kind of inter-, intra-, and extra-agency collaboration using the open source model is already finding success throughout the government, including the Veterans’ Administration Open Source VistA program, the National Security Agency’s SELinux project, and the OMB’s own data.gov.

It’s not difficult to imagine that these projects can encourage the growth of small businesses specializing in the implementation and maintenance of this software. Incorporating these stakeholders would bring to bear on the EPA’s FOIA platform far more development and testing resources than the EPA could muster on its own. Because the software assets have been commoditized, the EPA and other agencies would no longer be beholden to a single vendor for its FOIA software. This is the kind of relationship that OMB would like with its software assets, and this is precisely the kind of collaboration and commoditization that the current Shared First policy encourages. This is why we believe that the policy should make the role of open source explicit.

Open source software is particularly useful when the Federal government mandates action by state governments. The New York State Office of Temporary Disability Assistance has had great success in sharing open source eligibility logic with its counterparts in other states, allowing them all to share the burden of implementing CMS eligibility requirements. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has employed open source software to encourage the adoption of its CONNECT standards for electronic health records. Without open source, these efforts would rely on potentially expensive proprietary software, which would have to be either unfunded or subsidized by the Federal partner to encourage adoption of their mandates. Instead, these organizations can now work collaboratively and transparently to solve their common missions.

Releasing agency software as open source has other benefits, as well. One of the primary concerns of the draft policy is to encourage visibility: agencies cannot share with each other if they do not know what’s being shared. The open source community has largely solved this discoverability problem through tools like sourceforge.net and github.com, both of which may be used, free of cost, by Federal staff and the public.

Open Source for America is excited by this renewed focus on agency collaboration and transparency. We strongly support the Shared First policy, and believe that it is one of the best tools available to meet agencies’ current challenges. We look forward to working together with OMB and the implementing agencies to make the policy successful. We also believe that by encouraging agencies to open source their software, and to share that software with each other, we can together ensure that agencies are putting their existing budgets to their best and highest use.

As part of the Open Government Partnership, the US Government’s National Action Plan was released and the White House asked for input from the public on how citizen participation could be improved, facilitated, and measured. Here is OSFA’s response, which we submitted on January 3rd, 2012.

Open Source for America (OSFA) appreciates this opportunity to comment on the Open Government National Action Plan. OSFA was formed in 2009 to advocate for the use of open source software and the open source development process in the US Government. OSFA sees the Open Government Initiative as a unique opportunity to institutionalize the use of these tools to further to goals of transparency, collaboration, and participation &emdash; values which are inherent to the open source process itself. More information on OSFA can be found at http://www.opensourceforamerica.org.

Below, we focus our attention on one of the questions posed in the blog notice: What are the most effective forms of technology and web tools to encourage public participation, engage with the private sector/non-profit and academic communities, and provide the public with greater and more meaningful opportunities to influence agencies’ plans?

OSFA stands ready via its leadership and membership to work collaboratively to achieve the goals of the Action Plan and help identify Open Source tools that can assist in the work of the Action Plan.

Participation in Open Government Plans can take many forms, and be useful at different stages of the consultative process. This should be reflected in any system of measurement.

As a general matter, however, the forms of technology and web tools should be rooted in the open source development model and rely on open standards to encourage the widest participation and broadest utilization. In many respects, the work and progress of the Open Innovation agenda is relevant to achieving the goals of the National Action Plan.

This approach has a number of important collateral benefits for government: it encourages an on-going, cohesive community that wants to improve the technology and integrate user experience. It fosters a highly engaged constituency (vs a specific regimented approach) which becomes part of the process by developing new tools, modifying tools and the reuse of content and data which is produced through the consultation.

Based on our assessment of open government initiatives around the world to date, open government thrives where citizen interest is met with public sector support, and accelerates when open source innovation is a central core tenet of the policy. Open government initiatives and open source innovation share many core values , including: transparency , meritocracy of ideas , focus on the public interest. The tools generated from open innovation are also, based on our experience, highly available, affordable, and interoperable.

Too often, participation is narrowly understood as a written response to a government proposal. Instead, focus should be on encouraging participation through useful work by developing tools on a collaborative basis from relevant stakeholders which involve elements ranging from collecting and verifying data, bench marking its implementation, and the monitoring of its execution. This kind of participation is not well accounted for under the current consultative processes, which understand formal participation only as a persuasive document. Fortunately, we are no longer confined to the strictures of simply faxing in (or even mailing in) comments; the Web has allowed broader and more vigorous participation.

There are some useful examples that the Action Plan could draw upon. “Apps” contests, like Apps for Democracy and Apps for America, have been used largely as a tool for improving or supplementing the services delivered by government. We believe that there is also an opportunity to engage the software development community as policy is being developed, through contests and other means, to ensure their effective administration and help prevent unintended consequences.

Such tools would also increase the type and nature of feedback an agency might receive. We can imagine agencies being more than a convening body for input on the immediate matter, but a collection point for related data sets and tools that could improve the quality of the conversation more generally.

The challenge, in our view, is the ‘next step’ in realizing the full potential of Web participation. Having benefited from the enormous potential of the Internet, using open source tools and open standards, there is a need to focus on tools and processes that assist agencies in assessing the data and making actionable responses. As a step toward this end, the National Action Plan should include a recognition of this core element and seek community input on the state of such tools (including business analytic tools), and how they can be reused and broadly populated.

While it’s difficult to understand the full context, it appears Taggart is presenting a hypothetical scenario of what could happen to the open data movement if it doesn’t focus on key areas, such as forming a critical mass and getting Google to accommodate open data in its search results. Slides 27-33 offer ideas on how open data could be made more relevant and are worth reviewing.

One particular bullet point (“Build a business on open data. Really. Do it now!”) jumps out at me, because I hear this mantra over and over from people who aren’t practicing what they preach. My general comment is that there are vocal champions that advocate open data business models, but aren’t taking the entrepreneurial leap themselves.

My advice to them: Be the example.