The CSG Intergovernmental Software Collaborative

The CSG Intergovernmental Software Collaborative is a technical assistance center to support states and state supporting organizations interested in achieving information technology project efficiencies through multi-state collaboration.

State governments are consistently looking for ways to do more with less - operating efficiently while still delivering the key services and business operations that are fundamental for their policy goals. With much of state government work relying on software systems that are designed to achieve overlapping goals and functions, states have an opportunity to collectively benefit from their information technology investments with their fellow states through software collaboratives.

Software collaboratives are a form of multi-state collaboration that enable states to either individually or collectively develop and share their information technology systems as open source code. Open source code allows for states to readily share code improvements with one another and avoid using costly proprietary systems.

This will prevent 56 states, territories, and DC from buying 56 versions of near-identical, costly software, and instead allows them to procure high-quality, fair-priced software just once, and share it among themselves. The impacts of software collaboratives can be profound for a state – resulting in greater government efficiency, cost savings, and higher performing software systems.