[Disclaimer: the government is a Big Place and there is lots of variety.] With the exception of open source infrastructural tools that are used by the whole wo

[Disclaimer: the government is a Big Place and there is lots of variety.] With the exception of open source infrastructural tools that are used by the whole world, there probably are not many open source government-run projects that allow contributions from non-governmental employees. There are all sorts of reasons for this: - Some are legal. Lawyers get anxious about the soliciting or accepting free work. There are ethical issues around contributions - how do you know it isn't a bribe? - Many are technical. Someone has to review that code before it gets merged in. Who does that? Probably needs to be a government employee, but many government agencies don't have much, if any, in-house engineering resources - and what few resources they do have are already quite busy maintaining the current crop of software projects. How is this maintained once the open source contributors go on to other projects? - Many are a mix of both. How do you ensure the code meets proper security and compliance standards? Accessibility requirements? Records retention requirements? Who is responsible for fixing one of these issues when an issue is discovered? What happens if there is a support issue? Who can the case management worker who is out in the field contact to get help? This isn't to say these issues can't be solved. But it would take a lot of work to solve them all, and it would be difficult to solve them all in a way that would be cheaper than just hiring internal resources, buying a COTS solution, or hiring a vendor to build what you need. That being said - if you aren't ready to switch jobs, there are lots of government-adjacent open source projects - especially in the Open Data world. I'd recommend checking out your local Code for America brigade as a good starting point: https://brigade.codeforamerica.org/?_ga=2.169184225.1948638540.1604991891-909336803.1604991891 https://brigade.codeforamerica.org/?_ga=2.169184225.19486385...