How do I access code repositories in here?
First, you will need a GitHub account. It's recommended that you have a government-only account, even if you previously had a personal GitHub account.
- You should use your government email address; however, you can (and should) make your email address private by checking the "Keep my email addresses private" box on the GitHub Emails Settings page.
- Ensure your profile has your full name. Without this, your account may be removed from this GitHub organization if the admins are unable to verify who the account belongs to.
- The account must have two-factor authentication enabled.
If you need information on GitHub, Digital.gov's Introduction to GitHub is a good resource.
Send an email to opensource[at]hq.dhs.gov stating which existing repositories you need access to. Include what office you are with and if possible, include someone that already has access to that repository so the team can validate your request!
Government employee accounts may be added to a GitHub "Team" to provide access to multiple repositories if appropriate. For example, a new CTO Directorate employee that needs access to all CTO projects may be added to the "OCIO/CTOD" Team.
Note that accounts added as "members" to the GitHub organization without a Team assignment will not have access to any private repositories. Such access is either granted via addition to a Team, or by explicitly adding the user account to the specific project repository.
Have your DHS point of contact send an email to opensource[at]hq.dhs.gov stating which existing repositories you need access to. The email should include what office you are working with and level of access required!
Note: Only government personnel will be added to the organization as "members", and only government personnel will be given "admin" rights to repositories. Contractors must be "Outside Collaborators" and will at most receive "maintainer" rights to a repository, and should often be restricted to "developer" rights.
You are welcome to review all open source repositories here! We cannot grant you access to any private repositories.
I'm a government employee. How can I get a Git repository for my project?
Follow the instructions above to ensure you have a suitable GitHub account. Then send an email to opensource[at]hq.dhs.gov with your use case and requirements. It will be reviewed and if appopriate, a new repository will be created for you. By default, repositories will be private; however, they can be created public if that is appropriate, or switched to public after reviews are completed.
Government employees already added to the GitHub organization are allowed to create new repositories themselves; however, they should ensure they do so according to all applicable policies within their offices and the Department.
This GitHub organization is not suitable for sensitive data of any kind. That means no PII, no PHI, no FOUO data, and obviously nothing classified.
Can I host private repos here?
Yes! In fact, new repositories default to "private" in this GitHub organization.
How do I open source a repo?
The official DHS Reusable and Open Source Software Policy Directive contains some information on this topic. Further guidance is forthcoming, but until that is published, you should refer to your organizations internal processes.
The short version is: yes, we can release code as open source. The exact steps to doing so are specific to your organization, but should include code quality and security reviews as well as a privacy and legal review.
You can also review guidance from other Federal agencies (such as the DoD's code.mil project) if your office does not have specific guidance as a starting point.
Is this a paid/enterprise account, and can I access paid features?
This is not a paid account. As such, no paid features are present, and any "free tier" features are shared among all projects in this organization.
If you need more features which require paid subscriptions, you may want to use the DHS enterprise GitLab instance within the Maestro platform (requires being on the DHS network).
Can you enable [insert feature] for my project?
Most likely not, if it is a paid feature. See the answer above regarding this not being a paid account.