https://emanuelfeld.github.io/blog/2016/04/27/government-github-ecosystem.ht...
The government GitHub ecosystem Apr 27, 2016 Emanuel Feld
Governments have been flocking to GitHub.
Their reasons are plenty: the promise of “private sector” tools, a conviction that publicly-funded code should be public, the company’s evangelism (and stickers), etc. Whatever the case, GitHub now hosts at least 600 government organizations, with over 9,000 public repositories between them.
I had a notion of the global ecosystem this activity has sprouted—the players and their interactions—but wanted to back it up with data.
So, using GitHub’s API, I compiled a database of government GitHub organizations, their repositories, members, and contributors and dove in.
Summary
Overall, reuse within the government GitHub “ecosystem” is uneven and limited.
Nearly all popular repositories (inside and outside of government) were created by US and UK national organizations. The bulk are standards or frameworks. Modular products, like data.gov.uk’s CKAN extensions, also seem relatively reusable.
Collaborative work and reuse is most concentrated within the large US and UK national-level networks. This may point to the importance of scale, “real world” interactions (e.g. talks, meet-ups, employees switching between organizations), and the alignment of policy priorities, timelines, licensing, and tech stacks.
14% of repositories have no further activity after being posted to GitHub. 46% remain under development a year after they were created.
I didn’t find a license file for half of the repositories. At least 13% use the MIT license. At least 8% use some version of the GPL. License choice varies geographically.
Government GitHub organizations are bringing some new users to the platform along with them. But 45% of the users predate the government organizations they contribute to.
Estonia has the most government repositories per capita at 72.8 per million residents (hover over and click to zoom in on the map up top).
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