Federal Source Code Study Series Part 7: Organizational Location
As summarized in Part 1 of this series, the study explored four organizational factors believed to be hindering or aiding agency publication of OSS. The organizational factors were cultural beliefs, public engagement, structural dimensions, and organizational location. Each has been explored through a separate blog post ending with this one pertaining to organizational location.
Organizational Location
Organizational location should not be confused with physical location, rather it instead refers to where a unit resides hierarchically (i.e., its location on an organizational chart) and proximity to authority. The organization design literature suggests that a unit’s location should be selected to achieve internal consistency in order to match the organization’s response to the environment.
New technology arguably requires new forms of organizing. The U.S. federal government frequently relies on bureaucratic organizational forms. Divisions are organized in hierarchical fashion with a command-and-control structure for goal and rule management. Specifically, units exhibit several rational organizational form characteristics: routine tasks, high levels of formalization and centralization, and line departments directly supporting product development. Government units producing code in 2019, exhibit more open system organization forms similar to the collegial structuring of units in the early days of government computing. Divisions operate relatively autonomously, work is organized by function or project criteria, teams are organized to produce a particular product, there is low formalization and centralization, and units conduct activities across boundaries.
This study focused on organizational location as potentially affecting the frequency of units’ OSS publication as the FSCP can be viewed as an environmental disturbance.
Interview Guide & Organizational Location
Recall from Part 1 of this series, there were 25 participants from software development units in 20 CFO Act agencies. Some agencies had multiple participants, but no participant was from the same SW development unit.
The interview guide consisted of the following questions and statements pertaining to organizational location.
How does organizational location, or where a unit is located based on organizational form, affect OSS publication?
- Describe where your unit is located in the agency.
- Describe the autonomous nature of your unit.
Findings
There were slightly more units towards the metaphorical middle of the organization that more frequently published OSS. This was anecdotally traced to notions of working with the public and being close enough to a CIO office to understand the policy.
Coming Up
The next part of this series provides a holistic analysis of organizational factors and OSS publishing.
