Federal Source Code Policy: Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source Software

Aug 10

Editor’s Note: The complete OMB Memorandum M-16-21 is available here. Below is an excerpt.

From: Office of Management and Budget | Memorandum M-16-21

By Tony Scott, United States Chief Information Officer and Anne E. Rung, United States Chief Acquisition Officer

1. Objectives

This policy will accomplish the following objectives:

• Provide a policy to agencies 19 on considerations that must be made prior to acquiring any custom-developed code;

• Require agencies to obtain appropriate Government data rights to custom-developed code, including at a minimum, rights to Government-wide reuse and rights to modify the code. Agencies shall make such custom-developed code broadly available across the Federal Government, subject to limited exceptions;20

• Require agencies to consider the value of publishing custom code as OSS;

• Establish requirements for releasing custom-developed source code, including securing the rights necessary to make some custom-developed code releasable to the public as OSS under this policy’s new pilot program; and

• Provide instructions and resources to facilitate implementation of this policy.