The OMB plans to test this new policy during a two-year pilot program. Should the release of this code be deemed more valuable than whatever issues and unforeseen pitfalls arise from its being made public, the OMB may decide to increase the open-source requirements. In fact, until just recently, the OMB was pushing to make all federally created code to be open source. This data will be made available on Code.gov, a clearinghouse site that should launch in the next couple of months.

While this is certainly a commendable first step by the Obama Administration towards openness and transparency, two key positions of the president's 2012 platform, much more remains to be done. These new rules don't apply to privately developed code, even if it's used by the government. For example, Wiscon's use of the COMPAS sentencing software were recently deemed constitutional -- at least, not a violation of a defendant's due process rights -- despite nobody outside the company knowing how the proprietary algorithms actually work.