Federal Crowdsourcing Webinar Series, Episode 7: Crowdsourcing for Code

The U.S. government spends billions of dollars annually on information technology (IT). Whether sustaining legacy systems or procuring highly customized applications, the costs add up.

So it’s not surprising that the President’s Management Agenda pinpoints IT modernization as a key driver of transformation—capable of speeding service delivery, cutting costs to taxpayers, and improving how citizens interact with, perceive, and trust federal agencies.

Code.gov, a program known for maintaining “America’s code,” is working toward that mission with a crowdsourcing call-to-action to software designers, developers, and other civic-tech professionals from industry to iterate on open-source code solutions with federal colleagues.

Managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), Code.gov hosts an Open Task Repository, a collection of open-source software projects listed by federal agencies as open for collaboration. Governed by the program’s recently updated Contributor Code of Conduct, the program is building an inclusive and collegial community with technologists across the country.

See how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, GSA and the Defense, Energy, and Health and Human Services departments are crowdsourcing for code with more than 50 open tasks currently listed in the repo.

Amin Mehr is co-product owner of Code.gov in the Office of Solutions within GSA’s Technology Transformation Service. On the team, he works on a range of topics including strategy, product, outreach and customer experience to help agencies meet the objectives of the Federal Source Code Policy. Cross-agency collaboration is pivotal in ensuring that agencies are doing their best to build software in a smart and scalable manner. In his previous work at GSA, Amin served as former program director for Performance.gov alongside with his work on the CIO Council. He also has previously led teams at the Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce on BusinessUSA, SBIR and a variety of other IT initiatives.

Related Links:

• FedScoop Article on Code.gov Open Tasks
• New Decade, New Code.gov Code of Conduct
• Happy 3rd Birthday Code.gov! (webinar)!

More About the Federal Crowdsourcing Webinar Series

Airing the second Tuesday of each month, this series will illuminate how U.S. agencies are reaching beyond their walls to source talent and enthusiasm, and can multiply the ideas and perspectives being brought to a particular issue. Don’t miss these previous episodes:

• Episode 6: FedRAMP Ideation (October 2019), with Betsy Steele, GSA
• Episode 5: History by the People (August 2019), with Lauren Algee, Library of Congress
• Episode 4: Open Opportunities (July 2019), with Lisa Nelson, USAJOBS, OPM
• Episode 3: The Opportunity Project (June 2019), with Drew Zachary and Lorena Molina-Irizarry, U.S. Census Bureau
• Episode 2: Challenges and Prize Competitions (May 2019), with Jarah Meador, GSA, and Jessie Buerlein, HHS
• Episode 1: Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (April 2019), with John McLaughlin, NOAA, and Sophia B. Liu, USGS

This talk was hosted by Challenge.gov. Managed by GSA, Challenge.gov serves as both the official listing of prize competitions across government, as well as a centralized platform for federal agencies to market their problem-solving events. The program also designs resources and training, which have helped more than 100 federal agencies run over 900 prize competitions with public participation since 2010.