Open Source Repositories and Languages
Open Source Software development with a contemporary codebase is the gold standard for innovation, transparency, collaboration, and modernity for mission-driven technology tooling.
Key Insights
Leveraging the benefits of open source software is a matter of culture and prioritization, with few literal constraints standing in the way. This is exhibited by the diversity of mission, size, and budget of agencies that consistently lead and trail in these metrics.
EPA and NOAA are gold standards for their use of open source software. These agencies have the most repositories, maintain them at above average rates (only outmatched by agencies with very few repositories to maintain) and rank 1st and 3rd in proportion of IT spending on open source software.
Environmental agencies lead benchmark agencies significantly in repositories per million dollars of mission-focused IT spend. The top 5 are all environmental. On average, environmental agencies have over 11 times the number of repos per million dollars of mission-focused IT spend.
90% of environmental agencies have Python and R among their most used open source languages. Both are extremely popular with data and social scientists, implying that these open source projects are supporting evidence-based policy making.
Field agencies tend to use less diverse codebases that focus on more popular languages, whereas Research and Regulatory agencies employ more niche languages. This is likely a difference in the number of nuanced categories of information that each agency manages and analyzes.
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GitHub’s application programming interface (API) allowed us to pull data on the open source repositories maintained by environmental agencies of interest. With it, we are able to see each agency’s OSS volume, level of activity, and preferred development languages. We crossed these data with agency IT expenditures to evaluate the use of OSS relative to the agency’s overall technology spending.
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Open source software development is a vehicle for transforming open collaboration into a viable, scalable technology solution. Innovation is fundamentally driven by this manner of openness. By working in the open, environmental agencies will benefit from community contributions and create tools that are usable by aligned organizations, stretching the investment for even greater returns. OSS is more cost effective, secure, reliable, and scalable than proprietary products. Beyond the practical benefits, OSS is attractive to innovative tech talent and signals that the agency is a workplace where mission-driven innovators can have an impact commensurate with their skills.
The transparency of OSS can also improve the contracting process. Potential external partners can refine proposals and provide proofs of concept more easily for agencies that develop in the open. Partners can answer many of their own questions prior to engaging with the agency by reviewing OSS, reducing the burden on internal staff who manage proposal processes. Finally, open development gives partners a clear window into the technologies and architectures agencies use. A detailed understanding of those factors will ease workflow and compatibility hurdles down the line, reducing costs and shortening timelines.
In addition to agencies’ overall OSS presence, we broke down the programming languages they use most frequently among their OSS projects. Codebases that focus on popular and interoperable languages are more likely to attract a variety of contributors and lead to adoption by other organizations. While the OSS codebase is not necessarily reflective of the agency’s organizational codebase, it does provide clues.
Agencies Diverge Widely in Their Use of OSS Development
^The percentage of repositories that received at least one commit in the last six months.
*The number of OS repositories divided by the amount of mission and mission-related IT funding.
The Why
Open source software is an ROI multiplier. Using established, popular, effective programming languages enhances these effects. Several agencies already have robust open source environments, but most do not. On the flip side, most agencies are making good use of modern programming languages supplemented by those specialty languages that fit their particular purposes.
Environmentalism is a team sport. The more projects an agency can make public, the further they are stretching their IT dollars by engaging outside technologists and seeding mission-aligned initiatives for external organizations.
Including rare and specialty languages in open source codebases familiarizes partners and potential employees with them to improve collaboration moving forward.
The How
Follow guidance on code.gov designed to help agencies work in the open while complying with relevant laws and regulations.
Explore the offerings at Open Sustainable Technology for projects of interest and best practices in environmental open source work.
Check out one anothers’ open repositories to discover collaborations waiting to begin.