Under the bill, agencies would publicly list custom code they make or buy and share this code with the rest of the government. Image: Morrowind/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA newly offered bipartisan bill (S-3626) in the Senate would require federal agencies to share custom-developed source code with each other, in a bid to prevent duplicative government contracts to build software.
Under the bill, agencies would publicly list custom code they make or buy and share this code with the rest of the government. “Currently, the federal government spends approximately $12 billion annually purchasing software, including software that is “custom-developed” for agencies, such as websites, analytical models, and apps,” sponsors said in a statement.
“Despite the fact that much custom-developed code is not classified or sensitive, agencies generally do not make custom software available to one another, even though there is an existing website created for agencies to do so,” they said.
Also recently introduced was S-3613, to require facility security committees in federal buildings to formally consider and respond to security recommendations from the Federal Protective Service, following a GAO report finding that less than a tenth of such recommendations are fully implemented and above half never even get a response.
Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has approved nominees for key positions overseeing the federal workforce. They are Hampton Dellinger, a former assistant Attorney General, to head the Office of Special Counsel; former Special Counsel Henry Kerner for a vacant seat on the MSPB board; current MSPB board member and acting chair Cathy Harris to formally become chair of the board; and Suzanne Elizabeth Summerlin, formerly with the general counsel’s office of the NFFE union, to be FLRA general counsel.
The committee had approved those nominations last year but new votes were needed because the full Senate did not act on them by year’s end.
A nomination hearing has not yet been held on the recent nomination of Anne Marie Wagner, associate special counsel with the OSC, for the vacant seat on the FLRA governing board. Also still pending before the committee is the nomination for another term of current FLRA member Colleen Duffy Kiko.
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