About the Foundation for Public Code

Developers, designers and the open source community

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This group includes people who work directly for public administrations:

  • developers
  • other people on technology teams with developers, including designers, user researchers, product owners and delivery managers

It also includes people who work for suppliers to public administrations:

  • developers
  • other people on technology teams with developers, including designers, user researchers, product owners and delivery managers

It also includes:

  • other open source contributors
  • private companies building new products based on public code

Positive reasons for why they might be interested in our work:

  • sharing development broadens community and lets you tackle bigger problems
  • clearer expectations, more buy-in and community norms can help produce better code
  • built-in opportunities to learn from other organizations and their experience, leading to better results and services
  • new skills and reputations can lead to more professional development opportunities and new markets
  • more effective delivery of projects, with:
    • easier and more distributed maintenance
    • a common language and tools for collaboration
    • common training and onboarding

Negative reasons for why they might be interested in our work:

  • black boxes make security impossible
  • development is risky, especially if team members leave
  • discrepancy between the employment norms and culture of some public administrations and the open source community
  • skepticism about government and public administrations’ ability to do open source properly at scale