{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "content" : "news",
    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "DigitalGov Search: Our Open Source Strategy |Digital.gov",
    "description": "DigitalGov Search: Our Open Source Strategy",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/03/24/digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"DigitalGov Search: Our Open Source Strategy","summary" : "At DigitalGov Search, we keep an eye on on our what our government counterparts are up to, both in the U.S. and other countries. We recently came across Gov.UK’s philosophy on and approach to coding in the open. It caught our attention and we realized we should also articulate our open source strategy. Use and Contribute to Open","date" : "2014-03-24T10:00:42-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"ammie-farraj-feijoo" : "Ammie Farraj Feijoo"},"topics" : {
        
            "application-programming-interface" : "Application programming interface",
            "content-strategy" : "Content strategy",
            "open-source" : "Open source",
            "search" : "Search",
            "software-engineering" : "Software engineering"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2014-03-24-digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2014/03/2014-03-24-digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/03/2014-03-24-digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2014/03/2014-03-24-digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy.md","slug" : "digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2014/03/24/digitalgov-search-our-open-source-strategy/","content" :"\u003cp\u003eAt \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/services/search/\"\u003eDigitalGov Search\u003c/a\u003e, we keep an eye on on our what our government counterparts are up to, both in the U.S. and other countries. We recently came across \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.uk/\"\u003eGov.UK’s\u003c/a\u003e philosophy on and approach to \u003ca href=\"http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/12/coding-in-the-open\"\u003ecoding in the open\u003c/a\u003e. It caught our attention and we realized we should also articulate our open source strategy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"use-and-contribute-to-open-source-projects\"\u003eUse and Contribute to Open Source Projects\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/03/Open-Source-250-x-167-software-code-476999627.png\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/03/Open-Source-250-x-167-software-code-476999627.png\"\n    alt=\"Image of HTML code and scripts\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince 2010, we’ve embraced and leveraged open source software to build our site search service for federal, state, and local government websites. This use of open source has allowed us to experience enormous growth over the past few years. In March 2013 alone, over 24 million searchers received results from our service—a four-fold increase since March 2010.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur search service is now a complex system made up of many moving parts, including providing type-ahead search suggestions, serving search results, fetching, indexing, and caching content, and providing analytics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEach of these parts is compiled into our codebase and, as we use open source components for our system, we contribute back to the projects.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"code-in-the-open\"\u003eCode in the Open\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe recently began to unravel our monolithic codebase so that we can share individual pieces of our code. To borrow the phrase from Gov.UK, we’re now \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ecoding in the open\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe recently released the code for our \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/GSA/jobs_api\"\u003eJobs\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/GSA/recalls_api\"\u003eRecalls\u003c/a\u003e API servers. They’re our first foray into coding in the open. The source code for these API servers is in \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/GSA\"\u003eour GitHub repo\u003c/a\u003e and is available for anyone to see and contribute to.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data products for this code are also open and available for anyone to consume on our \u003ca href=\"http://search.digitalgov.gov/developer/index.html\"\u003eDeveloper hub\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese two servers and their underlying data now operate outside of our core search codebase.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing this same model, moving forward, we plan to:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShare first—For every new feature, we’ll write the code so that \u003cem\u003eanyone\u003c/em\u003e can make use of the code, not just us. If the public community contributes to the codebase, we’ll be able to improve this feature without taxing our developers.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExpose APIs—We’ll expose our data products as APIs so that \u003cem\u003eanyone\u003c/em\u003e can make use of the data, not just searchers on a government websites.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBe our own customer—We’ll use our own public code and data just like everyone else. We’ll call our own API servers to integrate the data within our search results pages.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"make-things-open-to-make-things-better\"\u003eMake Things Open to Make Things Better\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe agree with Gov.UK that “to make things open makes things better.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe have finite resources and we don’t want to lose our focus on serving our agency customers and improving visitors’ search experience on government websites. So, we won’t be spending a lot of time to build or support a vibrant community around our code.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat said, we hope that exposing the pieces of our system will be useful to someone somewhere. We’ll continue to provide the “ingredients” of our search service so that others will be able to make use of the code and data in ways that we could never imagine.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"and-we8217re-not-alone\"\u003eAnd, We’re Not Alone\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’re not alone. Other federal agencies have embraced the approach of coding in the open and have \u003ca href=\"http://gsa.github.io/federal-open-source-repos\"\u003eGitHub repos\u003c/a\u003e. Below are a just a few of our many favorites.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has embraced open source, including serving their public data sets through \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/cfpb/qu\"\u003equ\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUSA.gov recently released the code for their iPhone app.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe White House was in the forefront of using open source software in the federal government with their use of Drupal. They’re continuing to lead by example by opening up the code for their \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petitions\"\u003eWe the People petitions\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/WhiteHouse/wh-app-ios\"\u003eiOS\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/WhiteHouse/wh-app-android\"\u003eAndroid\u003c/a\u003e mobile apps.\u003cem\u003eEditor’s Note: Interested in learning more about search from the DigitalGov Search team? Register for the Search Is the New Big Data (in-person training).\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n"}
  ]
}