The British government should ensure it owns all software code it pays for and should share that code for free within the public sector, says a policy paper adopted Sept. 20 by the Liberal Democrats party, the minority partner of the two-party ruling coalition forming the United Kingdom's government.

In addition, the paper urges the British government to embrace collaborative software development along the lines of models on display at GitHub, an open source software project hosting website.

"The government could also consider providing resources to the creators responsible. Formerly it has been known for the government to attempt to replicate the work of such websites," the paper adds.

The party adopted the paper during an annual conference held this year in Birmingham. Liberal Democrats currently control 256 of 650 seats in Parliament, and formed the country's first peacetime coalition government in nearly 70 years with the Conservative Party, following a general election in May 2010.

Liberal Democrats also call for the government to implement an "interoperable open standards framework" also with an assumption that "public non-personal data belongs to the nation, so should be freely available."

However, governmental departments should not be able to access each other's data without adhering to established security protocols and standards, the paper says.

For more:
- download the policy paper, "Preparing the Ground: Stimulating Growth in the Digital Economy" (.pdf)

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