Review - S 3594 Introduced – Federal Code Sharing

Earlier this month, Sen Cruz (R,TX) introduced S 3594, the Source code Harmonization and Reuse in Information Technology (SHARE IT) Act. The bill would require the federal government to “maximize efficiency, minimize duplication, and enhance security and innovation across Federal agencies by requiring the sharing of custom-developed code between agencies”. The bill specifically prohibits the authorization of new funding to support the program.

Moving Forward

As I mentioned yesterday, this bill will be considered by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee tomorrow. There is one aspect of the bill that could engender opposition (see my Commentary below), but it could easily be revised in tomorrows markup. With that change, I suspect that there would be substantial bipartisan support for the bill. Since the bill is not politically important enough to be considered under the Senate’s time-consuming regular order, it will be important to watch tomorrow's hearing to see if Sen Paul (R,KY) supports the bill. If he opposes the bill, he would be likely to oppose consideration of the bill in the full Senate under the unanimous consent process. With his position as Ranking Member, he could effectively veto adding the provisions of the bill to other bills via the floor amendment process. Even if he supports the bill in Committee, he could still object to consideration of the bill under that process for unrelated political leverage.

Commentary

The biggest problem this bill is going to face moving forward is industry objections to the provisions of §4(a)(2):

“(2) all software and other key technical components, including documentation, data models, schemas, metadata, and architecture designs, are owned by the agency.”

This paragraph would require that all contracts for software (not restricted to ‘custom code’) going forward would provide for the government ownership of the software, not licensing for use by the vendor. This would be a major change that would be resisted by most (if not all) major software companies. I suspect that if were accepted by vendors (the federal government is a big customer after all) it would come with increased costs and a whole series of legal caveats that are currently covered by licensing agreements and ‘terms of use’ restrictions.

This problem could be solved by substituting the phrase used multiple times in this bill, ‘custom-developed code’ for the opening ‘all software’ in the paragraph. That is, after all, the overall intent of the bill. While there are arguments to be made for changing the ownership structure of software, that is a much larger issue than the relatively minor sharing of custom code in the federal government.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-3594-introduced - subscription required.