The source code for the General Services Administration’s new federal government social media registry is now freely available for download at the agency’s GitHub account.
The registry, which officially launched August 16, allows citizens to verify federal agency social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, by submitting a link of the account in question. According to GSA, more than 2,000 official accounts across 22 social media platforms are included in the registry.
“Others can use the code to build their own registries, or use the data from the APIs to build apps and online services that organize and present the data gathered in the registry in new ways,” said GSA Federal Citizen Information Center Director Bev Godwin via email.
“The social media landscape changes so quickly, open source code helps us adapt the Social Media Registry to new platforms that pop up,” said Godwin. “For example, in the time between when we started talking about this to when we launched it, Google+ and Storify came on the scene. Open source code doesn’t lock us into a proprietary system that might not be able to accommodate adding new platforms like these as easily and cheaply.”
The platform was developed in Ruby on Rails and can be downloaded at github.com/usagov.
