New Zealand agencies to share their code

New guidelines published to release government code.

New guidelines will allow New Zealand government agencies to publish their software code This will allow citizens and businesses to use the software code for free and build more products on top of it. “Agencies are actively encouraged to license their software code for re-use,” wrote Emma Gawen, a digital specialist and principal advisor in the Department of Internal Affairs. Agencies should provide guidance on how they will accept external contributions to the code they release, the guidelines say. Agencies should also consider whether a security code review is required to identify “sensitive elements” that may need to be removed, it says. The US Government last week followed with a policy requiring each agency to release at least 20% of its new custom-developed code for a three-year pilot period. Agencies are “strongly encouraged” to go beyond this minimum requirement, and “release as much custom-developed code as possible”, the Federal Source Code Policy says. Image by TechCrunch, licensed under CC BY 2.0