Introducing government.github.com | Hacker News Reader

Introducing government.github.com

github.com

431 points_pius78 comments

Great to see Philadelphia front and center with this project.

In Mayor Nutter's keynote at PennApps last month, he talked a lot about how Philly is really pushing for open data/open government. It's great to see those initiatives coming to fruition.

Philadelphia is a great city for open data/open government. There's a Chief Data Officer and a pretty active Code for America brigade.

Philly hacks every week! http://codeforphilly.org/

This is awesome. I respect GitHub more and more every day. However, despite how much I love the GitHub model and think it's a great way to collaborate, it's still (mostly) inaccessible for non-developers. Shameless plug: I think there is still some room for innovation here, so I'm building a GitHub for everyone else:

http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers

I wish we could use Git for scientific papers and legislation. I think the "Pull Request" model makes a lot of sense in both of those cases.

The last paper I published (IEEE for SC12) was written almost exclusively through a private Github repo. We didn't even think about using anything else -- it just worked. It helps that all of the authors were comfortable with TeX however.

Yeah, GitHub for papers is really hampered in fields that don't regularly use TeX.

Now that MS Word uses zipped xml as their format you can make some progress by specifying a custom diff driver which pipes the plain text to stdout.

https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattribut...

In work I accidentally discovered once that Microsoft Word (and Excel) supports three-way-merges natively, so there's at least that for non-TeX folks.

People who don't use TeX for accessibility reasons might want to give it another look. The tooling has risen in quality and accessibility hugely of late. I use TexPad[1] - which I like enormously.

Otherwise, as another commenter mentioned, there is always Markdown. Combined with MathJax[2] and custom style sheets you see many of the same benefits with greatly increased simplicity. A great desktop Markdown editor (if people don't like web based ones) is Mou[3].

Lastly - the advantage to using Markdown is that if you have to work with someone who does use TeX - something like pandoc[4] can be used to convert between formats fairly nicely.

One thing I think is missing is a "Make" like program to dictate how to combine multiple Markdown or TeX documents into a single document, which folders to scan for references etc. I've seen a couple of home grown solutions - but nothing that really fit the bill.

[1]: https://www.texpadapp.com/

[2]: http://www.mathjax.org/

[3]: http://mouapp.com/

[4]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Just go with markdown?

As much as I'd like to, I doubt my collaborators would go for it - I work with a lot of clinicians using ancient computers with a stable, predictable work pattern, and they are understandably content with that.

We do use Git for scientific papers internally. Especially in the proof reading stage we find it is the only manageable way to have multiple people provide constructive feedback to a paper in a limited time frame.

This has caught on with almost everyone (technically minded I should add) who has been exposed to the approach, so I wouldn't be surprised if this started to catch on in the wider field of Scientific publishing and Conference calls.

As a developer myself, I know it's hard to put a timetable on these kinds of things. That said, do you have a vague idea of when this is going to be released?

I'm on a Debate team, and this would be an awesome tool to collaborate on cases. I would use Github for it, but my team is not too tech savvy.

Oh, and is this going to be open source? I'd love to help out with this project.

Open alpha up right now [1]. I'm not pushing it too hard because there are still some usability issues and bugs to work out, but its getting there.

[1] http://penflip.com

Awesome! I'm signed up for alpha! Thanks!

Simply branching, making edits and PR's is not that difficult. You should consider trying Github for your use-case before you totally dismiss it. It's not as if the command-line tool is required.

The on-site editor on GitHub was a really great addition of recent.

Might want to look at https://www.authorea.com/ as well.

A standard markup language for flows would be a good idea, too.

I think Github agrees. I have a feeling their 100M investment from Andreesen will be used for this goal.

Cool. I agreet that there is defintely a lot of things GitHub is missing. A few ones I did myself:

3D Visualization of popular formats: https://github.com/danielribeiro/three-hub

Syntax Highlight on Diffs: https://github.com/danielribeiro/github-diff-highlight-exten...

What exactly is wrong with using Google Docs for writing that makes this better?

Heck, now that the Google Drive Realtime Collaboration API exists, he might as well build his system on top of that.

https://developers.google.com/drive/realtime/reference/

I haven't used the realtime API specifically, but my experiences building a startup around the Drive API leaves me extremely wary about relying on Google/Drive for anything critical. I currently wrap any call to their api in a try_5_times function since they 500 so frequently, and have to put all drive-related tasks in an exponential-backoff queue even after that for when they go down more seriously. Not what I'd want for core realtime functionality.

Would be very curious to hear from others who've used the actual realtime api, however.

I don't see Penflip as a replacement for Google Docs, but there are some cases where Docs breaks down - specifically when there are too many collaborators and when the content is too complex. Another interesting aspect is the need for multiple versions of the same core content - like a syllabus or textbook - with minor variations and modifications as needed. Something like this is unacheivable with Google Docs.

For small groups working on a short research paper, Google Docs is great. But could you imagine a book being written with Google Docs, especially with multiple people? That'd be completely unmanageable.

I love the HoTT book [1], because it's a great example of using GitHub to write a book with multiple contributors, and really illustrates the shortcomings with other technology [2].

[1] https://github.com/HoTT/book

[2] http://math.andrej.com/2013/06/20/the-hott-book/

It's nice to see the contextual diff as struck out text and highlighted text instead of the usual line by line thing.

Seems pretty US-centric. Governments outside the US are doing great things with open source too. The entire UK government website is open source, for example:

https://github.com/alphagov

They are! You can see them listed on the homepage as well as the community page, which lists organizations by country: http://government.github.com/community/

If you see any that are missing, please do open a pull request: https://github.com/github/government.github.com

Ah - missed that page. My bad.

What's US-centric about it? I don't see a reference to anywhere but Canada.

The word "government" being used to mean "government(s) in the USA."

There are lots of non-US examples here: http://government.github.com/community/

I saw a TED talk about using GH as a form of collaborative democracy once. I am so shocked (in the best way) that momentum is building this quickly.

Loved that talk! It was Clay Shirky "How the Internet will (one day) transform government" http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...

I figure what's happening is the governments around the world have started picking up people who are excited about open source and GitHub, as those people grow old enough to work in government. It wasn't long ago that GitHub was (in my eyes) mostly popular with early-twenties and younger, a demographic that doesn't usually work in government! But they grow older, some get hired in government, and they bring their enthusiasm with them.

And there are some exceptions! The CFPB, in particular, has a number of extremely talented young people doing awesome work and in-house development for them -- and they open source a great deal of work: https://github.com/cfpb

Admitting it's totally beside the point, what is the deal with the "trademark" Campfire emoji at the end of the post? Soon(tm)? In-joke?

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23112/where-did-so...

This is really cool. I sent a request to my City to join. I'd be happy to donate some time improving their website if the source were public.

Here is the Changlelog episode of Civic Hacking

http://5by5.tv/changelog/95

This is a pretty ironic timing considering the fact that there's no government in the US for now :)

That's a fairly imprecise and inaccurate statement. Lots of governments in the US are still functioning (i.e. state and local), many of which are represented there. And even then, the administration is only partly shut down at the moment, even if it IS a pretty big part.

We've not actually descended into anarchy here at the moment.

this implies that the world delves into anarchy without government, and no I'm not an anarcho anything

what I immediately thought is what a contrast.

On one hand we have technologists at github who believe the government can and should be improved ... and are doing something about it.

On the other hand we have pessimists who are so anti-government they'll enthusiastically shutdown the government.

Bitcoin + contracts => new governments https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

Quote from Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick Szabo.

"We are now entering an era of online communications and software "literacy". The "physics of cyberspace", studied by computer scientists, are radically different from the properties of paper, to an even greater degree than paper was different from string, clay, and metal. "

And so, github claims this space.

I wish github would work on some features that help developers write better code rather then this, which looks like it was put together by some intern.

Github is a lot bigger than just helping developers now. Rendering CAD files, Visualizing CLU maps. Github isn't working just on improving the developer experience. They're working on improving the entire collaborative process. I love that now they're helping even government be collaborative.

Just because its not focused on code doesn't mean you can dismiss it as "some intern" project.

Here is a list of free programming books on GitHub: https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books

I hope it will help you and other developers write better code.

Yeah, this is just marketing. Like when they got all excited that the Linux kernel was being hosted at Github. It was just a mirror that Torvalds set up. Github is/was being used as dumb storage.

Does this mean we know longer need Congress because we can legislate through version control? Cuz that would be awesome.

amazing potential. but in the end - out of scope. If you go through the least each org has only few repos with little interest. One of the more interesting ones is: https://github.com/opengovplatform

Many of these organizations may be testing the response they get from creating a Github account. This project is a way they can receive feedback instead of dying in obscurity. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Edit: Longer explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6556181

out of scope because they haven't done anything yet? Perhaps the issue is visibility and mindshare to do something civic, in which case, this would help - no?

Read Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick Szabo and couple that with Bitcoin. Think of laws as being online documents with their own git layer, public repo infrastructure.

How about GDS? https://github.com/alphagov

How are all those civilian agencies using GitHub without a FISMA or FedRAMP approval (or does GitHub have one and just not advertise it)?

I see at least NASA on there (who just got in trouble with their IG for improper use of un-accredited cloud services).

Or does this include GitHub Enterprise users?

As far as I can tell the FISMA certification is done by the agency itself, in accordance with the guidelines laid out by NIST and OMB directives. As long as the confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements are all "low" I don't see why the agency CIO couldn't simply deem GitHub as an acceptable information system for the purposes of posting files that are already cleared for unlimited public release.

That 'deeming' is the ATO / certification act. That's what I was asking: has any federal CIO or AO actually certified and granted an ATO to GitHub? This would be fantastic news, but I doubt it.

Also, Github (the SaaS) is a 'cloud' service, so it would need FedRAMP approval (which could be done via the agency ATO if they desired) as well, but it wasn't on the FedRAMP site last I checked.

Thanks for that. Ironically, I'm trying to collaborate with some folks, I'm DoD, and can't access the github site. And now, with the shutdown, I can't access NIST either (they are apparently closed for business except for a couple critical roles).

I'd recommend reaching out to @BenBalter to talk through using this for DoD. As for FISMA and compliance I believe GitHub has a government-ready ToS that could be applied - but you'd probably want to get an official go-ahead to use it to host code, and I'd still think hard about using GitHub vs. a git service behind the firewall depending on what you're building.

Archive.org had much of the NIST content mirrored, if you just need specific pub references/etc. (and not trying to work with the people specifically).

Getting GitHub for DoD would be great...

I'm on a DoD network and can't even access github.

Funny a while ago a friend suggested we should version law texts and publish it, this is even better.

So... github wants to be wikileaks?

Woo, just submitted a pull request to get openlexington of Lexington, KY on there.

Now can we use it to collaboratively fix Healthcare.gov?

I have a good chunk of the frontend up at https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace. As for the APIs, we will never see that code - Healthcare.gov reuses a large number of critical government systems that will likely stay closed forever or are paid vendor systems, like Oracle Access Manager.

Before we go on, please have someone fix this bug. We are making a lot of suggestion, but no WhiteHouse developers are interested in this. This is not how you do an open source project.

https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3

Maybe if you weren't trolling the github issues section relevant issues could be worked on.

You should tell everyone on that issue. And caring about your government is not trolling. It's funny to see those suggestions, but they carry a freakin' point.

I think he means that the people working on the Github repo have very likely nearly zero capability to do anything about the government shutdown, therefore it's the Wrong Place to Complain. It's not helpful for that project. (It was, however, funny and well-written. :))

Some people deliberately use repos, issues, etc for tracking things like that in their own life, but in general it's pretty discourteous to the developers who maintain a repo about one thing (a theme for the WH site?) if you are complaining about things outside their locus of control.

You wouldn't complain to your congressperson if the White House website is broken, so complaining on the issues page of the White House web theme repo should similarly avoided.

Call your congressman. Write letters to the president. Petition on the Whitehouse homepage. Those are all more constructive ways of complaining. Venting on someone else's repo seems rude, though.

I think at this point they know we are all angry at their inability to reboot government.

I brought this up because if you were to open source government websites and IT projects, it is also doable to create an issue tracker fills with questions and issues for congressmen, no?

We have issue tracker with issue labels. A cognressman can probably create an issue tracker like that! And update CHANGELOG.md periodically to show progress!

By the way, I wouldn't contribute to government repos myself because from my observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die.

By the way, I wouldn't contribute to government repos myself because from my observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die.

Many of these government repos are having problems because they're stuck in an old bureaucratic process. Their official process involves a static website with a list of software that has passed a review and release process. A developer will submit a bit of software for release and some other department will publish it on the website (after approval by everyone and their brother). The developer will need to perform this process for each release.

This doesn't translate well to Github. The developer will submit their software for review and another department will post it to Github. They're using Github like the static website that they used before -- there's nothing in the process that keeps the developer tied into the project once it's released. The developer may not actually have permission to their software repos because some process forces them to only release it through another department (they're definitely complaining about this, trust me). This completely breaks pull requests and may be the reason for the lack of response.

It would help the developer if they could point to Github and say: "Look at all of those pull requests we've been ignoring! Our process is broken! We must fix it!".

If external developers feel that the project is dead, or they're being ignored, pull requests will not be made. However, if there are no pull requests, it's tough for the developer to make an argument to change policy. The circle here needs to be broken.

If you've ever worked in government, you'll understand how difficult it would be to get this process updated. It will be updated eventually, but probably not in the near future -- especially for agencies that don't have a larger group of developers.

Having said that, not all government repos ignore pull requests. I manage a few "government repos" and try my best to respond/merge within 24 hours (most of my responses are under an hour -- even on weekends). It helps that we have a ton of developers who constantly push to keep things open. Even then, it was only in the past few weeks that we finally took down our static list-of-software website.

TL;DR, please don't give up on submitting pull requests. It might even help out the developer if you complain a bit to the folks responsible for "review and release" (which will probably consist of multiple departments).

As much as I disagree with the way the Republicans are leading this shutdown, I can see their point.

Government gets soo bogged down in process after process, and no amount of breaking away from that gives any sort of relief. Companies _can_ be more agile and make change much quicker than government can.

I've also heard the stories from members in government. Some say that open source is evil, or insecure, or whatever.. Or another where pallets of unused supplies sit to be thrown away. Or I've also heard stories about more money thrown at a developer working in the Army that has to buy useless equipment so his budget isn't destroyed next year (and yes, he's at our hackerspace, and during shutdown).

Then again, I side with the Dems on the PPACA issue. Our health care in the US stinks. It's something in the general right direction...

I am hoping that process will change, at least more agile and efficient for lead developers. I can understand the whole security, usability impact. Wild agile doesn't help in a structural organization serving millions of non-technical users.

And thanks for the insight.

Some of those developers might be furloughed at the moment... nobody to fix the bug.

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