18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "Curate the best thinking available"
authors:
- theresa
tags:
- code.gov
- open source
- collaboration tools
excerpt: "The Federal Source Code Policy, which was signed this year, requires federal agencies to inventory their custom software and make the inventory available for consumption and display by code.gov (among other things). The most pressing work in building code.gov was defining a software metadata schema — a way for agencies to format the details of the software they’ve built."
image: /assets/blog/code-gov/homepage-cfpb.jpg
---

When I joined the [code.gov](https://code.gov/) project, I had just
over a month to make an impact on the project. The most pressing work
seemed to be defining a software metadata schema — a way for agencies to
format the details of the software they’ve built.

In August of this year, the [Federal Source Code
Policy](https://sourcecode.cio.gov/) was signed. It requires federal
agencies to, among other things, inventory their custom software and
make the inventory available for consumption and display by code.gov.
This will allow agencies to reuse and collaborate on software. You can
[read more about the policy on
code.gov](https://code.gov/#/policy-guide/docs/overview/introduction).

![The code.gov homepage showing CFPB's open source resources]({{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.image }})

The urgency to define the schema was driven by a 120-day deadline for
agencies to use the schema to prepare their enterprise code inventories.
We needed to define the schema with plenty of time for agencies to
digest and adopt it.

Something else we were keenly aware of was that we were defining
something agencies would be *required* to comply with, adding more work
to their already formidable workloads. The schema needed to be easy to
implement and understand, or else we would jeopardize adoption of the
policy.

When I joined the project, I was able to start with a draft schema from
one of my colleagues. I’m new to the art of schema specification, and
this led me to the decision I think made all the difference to the
outcome of the schema definition — **I decided to bring in as many
outside voices and ideas as I could**. I came to quickly view my role as
the curator of the best thinking available.

I started by putting a call out to a handful of my 18F colleagues whom I
knew had more experience in the area than I did and asked for feedback.
Admittedly, at this point I was reluctant to put what we had out into
the world as I felt it wasn’t polished enough, but with some gentle
encouragement from others on the project, we published [our first
GitHub issue calling for
feedback](https://github.com/presidential-innovation-fellows/code-gov-web/issues/41).

I’m very glad we created that issue when we did. We received an amazing
amount of high-quality feedback from the community, including both
agency folks and the public in general. People brought up a great point,
that we weren’t the first people to think about defining such a schema.
After reviewing and prototyping a couple, we settled on an approach
based off of this [civic.json](http://open.dc.gov/civic.json/),
originally defined by BetaNYC and extended by Code for DC and DC
government employees.

```json
  {
    "agency": "DOABC",
    "organization": "XYZ Department",
    "projects": [
      {
        "name": "mygov",
        "description": "A Platform for Connecting People and Government",
        "license": "https://path.to/license",
        "openSourceProject": 1,
        "governmentWideReuseProject": 0,
        "tags": [
          "platform",
          "government",
          "connecting",
          "people"
        ],
        "contact": {
          "email": "project@agency.gov",
          "name": "Project Coordinator Name",
          "URL": "https://twitter.com/projectname",
          "phone": "2025551313"
        },
        "status": "Alpha",
        "vcs": "git",
        "repository": "https://github.com/presidential-innovation-fellows",
        "homepage": "https://agency.gov/project-homepage",
        "downloadURL": "https://agency.gov/project/dist.tar.gz",
        "languages": [
          "java",
          "python"
        ],
        "partners": [
          {
            "name": "DOXYZ",
            "email": "project@doxyz.gov"
          }
        ],
        "exemption": null,
        "update": {
          "lastCommit": "2016-04-13",
          "metadataLastUpdated": "2016-04-13",
          "lastModified": "2016-04-12"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
```

We made [a call for a second round of
feedback](https://github.com/presidential-innovation-fellows/code-gov-web/issues/44)
to verify that there were no major issues in the schema we were
proposing. I recognized that a schema defined in a month largely by
someone new to the policy would certainly not be perfect, and instead
wanted to focus on a solid foundation that could be extended. I hope we
accomplished that, and you can be the judge by checking out the
[documentation on
code.gov](https://code.gov/#/policy-guide/docs/compliance/inventory-code).

We were able to find success within the aggressive timeline because we
relied on the wisdom of others with more domain knowledge and technical
expertise to guide us. Instead of coming up with our own custom approach
in isolation, we asked for input from our users and the public. This has
helped our agency partners feel more engaged and has created a better
end product. We were able to leverage something that already exists, and
verify that it met our users’ needs, all within a month!