White House web site goes open source

The programming overhaul of the official portal for the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov) allows thousands of people to individually pick codes apart for a chance to offer upgrades, tweaks and additions that would help improve security.

"Security is fundamentally built into the development process because the community is made up of people from all across the world, and they look at the source code from the very start of the process until it's deployed and after," said Terri Molini of Open Source for America, an interest group that has pushed for more such programs.

White House officials claim that despite the technical modifications being carried in the background, the layout of the web site will continue to remain unchanged. It is expected that by going open-source, the White House site will be more secure for future administrations.

Opening the programming side of the site will not make the site less secure, say experts. Instead, the web site will be even more secure with thousands of programmers online now constantly refining the programs and finding potential pitfalls.

This latest move by the Obama administration will also save more of taxpayers' money. Previously when the programming model was owned solely by the government, federal contractors would have to work through the reams of code to troubleshoot it or upgrade it.