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At the very least publically funded code should be open between government departments. There seems to be a lot of internally developed work that is unnecessarily replicated or lost just due to having no obligation or available resources to share or collaborate. Maybe there needs to be some system in place to have some sort of internal NDA or need to know check, but this seems like a good first step.

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You're assuming government code even uses proper documentation or version control..

I'm assuming they don't. I guess to clarify, I'm desiring that the government not only mandates that they do use documentation and source control, but that they commit such code to a repository accessible by other departments. A minimal readme and "init" push may do the trick, but I'd want my local counsel to at least be able to pull the code for something like the government's favorite public website implementation and reuse it at lower cost than redoing it.

It's easier to justify these practices when they have the real payout of reducing duplication.

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