
Introducing government.github.com - _pius
https://github.com/blog/1657-introducing-government-github-com
======
aroman
Great to see Philadelphia front and center with this project.

In Mayor Nutter's keynote at PennApps last month, he talked a lot about how
Philly is really pushing for open data/open government. It's great to see
those initiatives coming to fruition.

~~~
jrubinovitz
Philadelphia is a great city for open data/open government. There's a Chief
Data Officer and a pretty active Code for America brigade.

~~~
jarvuschris
Philly hacks every week!
[http://codeforphilly.org/](http://codeforphilly.org/)

------
guynamedloren
This is awesome. I respect GitHub more and more every day. However, despite
how much I love the GitHub model and think it's a great way to collaborate,
it's still (mostly) inaccessible for non-developers. Shameless plug: I think
there is still some room for innovation here, so I'm building a GitHub for
everyone else:

[http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers](http://madebyloren.com/github-for-
writers)

~~~
dynamic99
As a developer myself, I know it's hard to put a timetable on these kinds of
things. That said, do you have a vague idea of when this is going to be
released?

I'm on a Debate team, and this would be an awesome tool to collaborate on
cases. I would use Github for it, but my team is not too tech savvy.

Oh, and is this going to be open source? I'd love to help out with this
project.

~~~
guynamedloren
Open alpha up right now [1]. I'm not pushing it too hard because there are
still some usability issues and bugs to work out, but its getting there.

[1] [http://penflip.com](http://penflip.com)

~~~
dynamic99
Awesome! I'm signed up for alpha! Thanks!

------
bfirsh
Seems pretty US-centric. Governments outside the US are doing great things
with open source too. The entire UK government website is open source, for
example:

[https://github.com/alphagov](https://github.com/alphagov)

~~~
briandoll
They are! You can see them listed on the homepage as well as the community
page, which lists organizations by country:
[http://government.github.com/community/](http://government.github.com/community/)

If you see any that are missing, please do open a pull request:
[https://github.com/github/government.github.com](https://github.com/github/government.github.com)

~~~
bfirsh
Ah - missed that page. My bad.

------
clienthunter
I saw a TED talk about using GH as a form of collaborative democracy once. I
am so shocked (in the best way) that momentum is building this quickly.

~~~
briandoll
Loved that talk! It was Clay Shirky "How the Internet will (one day) transform
government"
[http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government.html)

------
robbfitzsimmons
Admitting it's totally beside the point, what is the deal with the "trademark"
Campfire emoji at the end of the post? Soon(tm)? In-joke?

~~~
lost-theory
[http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23112/where-did-
so...](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23112/where-did-soon-
originate)

------
stevewilber
This is really cool. I sent a request to my City to join. I'd be happy to
donate some time improving their website if the source were public.

------
Siecje
Here is the Changlelog episode of Civic Hacking

[http://5by5.tv/changelog/95](http://5by5.tv/changelog/95)

------
pouzy
This is a pretty ironic timing considering the fact that there's no government
in the US for now :)

~~~
kylemaxwell
That's a fairly imprecise _and_ inaccurate statement. Lots of governments in
the US are still functioning (i.e. state and local), many of which are
represented there. And even then, the administration is only partly shut down
at the moment, even if it IS a pretty big part.

We've not actually descended into anarchy here at the moment.

~~~
eruditely
this implies that the world delves into anarchy without government, and no I'm
not an anarcho anything

------
bachback
Bitcoin + contracts => new governments
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts)

Quote from Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick
Szabo.

"We are now entering an era of online communications and software "literacy".
The "physics of cyberspace", studied by computer scientists, are radically
different from the properties of paper, to an even greater degree than paper
was different from string, clay, and metal. "

------
pizza
And so, github claims this space.

------
Joe_Quincy
I wish github would work on some features that help developers write better
code rather then this, which looks like it was put together by some intern.

~~~
mangoman
Github is a lot bigger than just helping developers now. Rendering CAD files,
Visualizing CLU maps. Github isn't working just on improving the developer
experience. They're working on improving the entire collaborative process. I
love that now they're helping even government be collaborative.

Just because its not focused on code doesn't mean you can dismiss it as "some
intern" project.

------
Kinnard
Does this mean we know longer need Congress because we can legislate through
version control? Cuz that would be awesome.

------
bachback
amazing potential. but in the end - out of scope. If you go through the least
each org has only few repos with little interest. One of the more interesting
ones is:
[https://github.com/opengovplatform](https://github.com/opengovplatform)

~~~
cleverjake
out of scope because they haven't done anything yet? Perhaps the issue is
visibility and mindshare to do something civic, in which case, this would help
- no?

~~~
bachback
Read Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick Szabo
and couple that with Bitcoin. Think of laws as being online documents with
their own git layer, public repo infrastructure.

"We are now entering an era of online communications and software "literacy".
The "physics of cyberspace", studied by computer scientists, are radically
different from the properties of paper, to an even greater degree than paper
was different from string, clay, and metal. "

------
count
How are all those civilian agencies using GitHub without a FISMA or FedRAMP
approval (or does GitHub have one and just not advertise it)?

I see at least NASA on there (who just got in trouble with their IG for
improper use of un-accredited cloud services).

Or does this include GitHub Enterprise users?

~~~
mpyne
As far as I can tell the FISMA certification is done by the agency itself, in
accordance with the guidelines laid out by NIST and OMB directives. As long as
the confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements are all "low" I
don't see why the agency CIO couldn't simply deem GitHub as an acceptable
information system for the purposes of posting files that are already cleared
for unlimited public release.

~~~
niels_olson
Thanks for that. Ironically, I'm trying to collaborate with some folks, I'm
DoD, and can't access the github site. And now, with the shutdown, I can't
access NIST either (they are apparently closed for business except for a
couple critical roles).

~~~
sailfast
I'd recommend reaching out to @BenBalter to talk through using this for DoD.
As for FISMA and compliance I believe GitHub has a government-ready ToS that
could be applied - but you'd probably want to get an official go-ahead to use
it to host code, and I'd still think hard about using GitHub vs. a git service
behind the firewall depending on what you're building.

------
niels_olson
I'm on a DoD network and can't even access github.

------
agumonkey
Funny a while ago a friend suggested we should version law texts and publish
it, this is even better.

------
AstroChimpHam
So... github wants to be wikileaks?

------
cheshire137
Woo, just submitted a pull request to get openlexington of Lexington, KY on
there.

------
bitwize
Now can we use it to collaboratively fix Healthcare.gov?

~~~
STRML
I have a good chunk of the frontend up at
[https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-
Marketplace](https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace). As for the
APIs, we will never see that code - Healthcare.gov reuses a large number of
critical government systems that will likely stay closed forever or are paid
vendor systems, like Oracle Access Manager.

------
yeukhon
Before we go on, please have someone fix this bug. We are making a lot of
suggestion, but no WhiteHouse developers are interested in this. This is not
how you do an open source project.

[https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3)

~~~
d23
Maybe if you weren't trolling the github issues section relevant issues could
be worked on.

~~~
yeukhon
You should tell everyone on that issue. And caring about your government is
not trolling. It's funny to see those suggestions, but they carry a freakin'
point.

~~~
gknoy
I think he means that the people working on the Github repo have very likely
nearly zero capability to do anything about the government shutdown, therefore
it's the Wrong Place to Complain. It's not helpful for that project. (It was,
however, funny and well-written. :))

Some people deliberately use repos, issues, etc for tracking things like that
in their own life, but in general it's pretty discourteous to the developers
who maintain a repo about one thing (a theme for the WH site?) if you are
complaining about things outside their locus of control.

You wouldn't complain to your congressperson if the White House website is
broken, so complaining on the _issues page of the White House web theme repo_
should similarly avoided.

Call your congressman. Write letters to the president. Petition on the
Whitehouse homepage. Those are all more constructive ways of complaining.
Venting on someone else's repo seems rude, though.

~~~
yeukhon
I think at this point they know we are all angry at their inability to reboot
government.

I brought this up because if you were to open source government websites and
IT projects, it is also doable to create an issue tracker fills with questions
and issues for congressmen, no?

We have issue tracker with issue labels. A cognressman can probably create an
issue tracker like that! And update CHANGELOG.md periodically to show
progress!

By the way, I wouldn't contribute to government repos myself because from my
observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die.

~~~
fintler
_By the way, I wouldn 't contribute to government repos myself because from my
observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die._

Many of these government repos are having problems because they're stuck in an
old bureaucratic process. Their official process involves a static website
with a list of software that has passed a review and release process. A
developer will submit a bit of software for release and some other department
will publish it on the website (after approval by everyone and their brother).
The developer will need to perform this process for each release.

This doesn't translate well to Github. The developer will submit their
software for review and another department will post it to Github. They're
using Github like the static website that they used before -- there's nothing
in the process that keeps the developer tied into the project once it's
released. The developer may not actually have permission to their software
repos because some process forces them to only release it through another
department (they're definitely complaining about this, trust me). This
completely breaks pull requests and may be the reason for the lack of
response.

It would help the developer if they could point to Github and say: "Look at
all of those pull requests we've been ignoring! Our process is broken! We must
fix it!".

If external developers feel that the project is dead, or they're being
ignored, pull requests will not be made. However, if there are no pull
requests, it's tough for the developer to make an argument to change policy.
The circle here needs to be broken.

If you've ever worked in government, you'll understand how difficult it would
be to get this process updated. It will be updated eventually, but probably
not in the near future -- especially for agencies that don't have a larger
group of developers.

Having said that, not all government repos ignore pull requests. I manage a
few "government repos" and try my best to respond/merge within 24 hours (most
of my responses are under an hour -- even on weekends). It helps that we have
a ton of developers who constantly push to keep things open. Even then, it was
only in the past few weeks that we finally took down our static list-of-
software website.

TL;DR, please don't give up on submitting pull requests. It might even help
out the developer if you complain a bit to the folks responsible for "review
and release" (which will probably consist of multiple departments).

~~~
kefka
As much as I disagree with the way the Republicans are leading this shutdown,
I can see their point.

Government gets soo bogged down in process after process, and no amount of
breaking away from that gives any sort of relief. Companies _can_ be more
agile and make change much quicker than government can.

I've also heard the stories from members in government. Some say that open
source is evil, or insecure, or whatever.. Or another where pallets of unused
supplies sit to be thrown away. Or I've also heard stories about more money
thrown at a developer working in the Army that has to buy useless equipment so
his budget isn't destroyed next year (and yes, he's at our hackerspace, and
during shutdown).

Then again, I side with the Dems on the PPACA issue. Our health care in the US
stinks. It's something in the general right direction...

