The California Department of Technology has set a new standard for state government technology offices, releasing an open source and code reuse policy “to better support cost efficiency, effectiveness, and the public’s experience with government programs.”

“Currently, when Agencies/state entities produce custom-developed source code, they do not make their new code broadly available for state government-wide reuse,” says CDT in a newly-issued technology letter. “These challenges have resulted in duplicative acquisitions for substantially similar code and the inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. Enhanced reuse of custom-developed code across state government can have significant benefits for taxpayers, including decreasing duplicative costs for the same code and reducing vendor lock-in.”

The new policy also establishes the creation of a state public code repository, located at code.ca.gov.

Related to this new policy, updates were made to the State Administrative Manual Sections 4984, 4984.1 and 4984.2.

Read the complete technology letter.