Open Source Government: Code-Sharing Site Hires Federal Liaison

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | March 6, 2013

The computer code sharing site GitHub's first government liaison says he hopes to be a bridge between the government and open source communities on legislation and regulations, not just code.

Federal agencies and the White House have posted the underlying code running numerous websites and Web tools to GitHub in recent years so outside developers can pull data from the sites, suggest improvements or retrofit the sites to serve their own needs.

As GitHub’s government liaison, Benjamin Balter said, he will encourage agencies to extend that open source mentality to government-gathered data, agency policy decisions and even proposed regulations and legislation...