Govt unveils draft of National Source Code Policy 2025, seeks stakeholder feedback
Experts, citizens at home and abroad, academia, government bodies and industry have been asked to review the draft and submit written feedback
The Information and Communication Technology Division has published the draft of the National Source Code Policy 2025 on its official website with the tagline, "Public Money, Public Code."
The policy positions government-funded software as a national asset, aiming to ensure public-interest ownership, transparency, security and reusability of platforms, applications and digital services developed with public funds.
It will cover all software and systems built or adopted under government initiatives financed through the national budget, development partners or foreign loans, and will be compulsory for all ministries, divisions, directorates, statutory, autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies.
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Under the draft, source code and related components of all government-funded software will be preserved in a central National Source Code Repository managed by the Bangladesh Computer Council. Deployment of any software will not be permitted without source code submission and full traceability and auditability requirements.
The policy also stipulates that government-developed code will generally be treated as open source unless specifically exempted on national security or confidentiality grounds, though even exempted systems must remain registered and maintained through the repository.
To strengthen software quality and security, the draft introduces mandatory secure coding supervision, an approved CI/CD pipeline for all deployments, automated and manual security checks and licence verification.
Repository access will be controlled under role-based protocols, and contributors, auditors and maintainers will be required to sign government-approved non-disclosure agreements.
In addition, datasets connected to government software must be classified as open, restricted or regulated and indexed in the National Data Catalog.
The draft has been uploaded to the ICT Division's website for stakeholder responses.
Bangladeshi citizens at home and abroad, domain specialists, university faculty, government representatives, industry bodies and development partners have been asked to review the document and send written recommendations.
Feedback may be submitted by email to [email protected]
or by post to the Secretary, ICT Division, ICT Tower (4th Floor), Agargaon, Dhaka.
