Storming the castle: Open source challenges in government

Working for the government presents two major hurdles in open source development: getting your hands on open source developed libraries and finding ways to contribute to open source development in the workplace. Kathy Lee and Morgan Senkal discuss these challenges and offer possible solutions.

Imagine sitting in your cubicle, googling “how do I ____?” and finding the perfect open source solution, and NOT being able to just download it. Then imagine developing something really cool that you think is the perfect library for open source and not knowing if or how you can share it. Being a public employee who develops software can be a real challenge. Typical tools that private sector developers take for granted are not allowed—or if they are, they must go through a long and rigorous vetting process that requires babysitting in order to not be forgotten in a pile of paperwork and red tape. Simple things like wanting to watch a cool YouTube tutorial can turn into a week’s worth of paperwork. Firefox and Chrome are browsers only recently available to us and only through Citrix making them not reliably available. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter—all are blocked sites. In today’s climate of developer meritocracy, not being able to contribute to open source projects can potentially limit your career options should you actually consider leaving government service (perish the thought!). Kathy Lee and Morgan Senkal discuss these challenges and suggest possible opportunities for public-sector contributions.