Skip to main content
Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Public Repositories in the VA

Prerequisites for requesting a public repository

When opening an issue to request to change your repository’s visibility to Public, please ensure your repository meets the following requirements:

  • Certify that all branches, issues, and PR’s are free of internally sensitive VA information, this includes:
    • Internal domains/hostnames
    • Internal architecture diagrams
    • Sensitive credentials/secrets not picked up by GitHub Secret Scanning, such as Active Directory usernames and domain names
    • Information about VA internal systems
    • There exists no PII/PHI in the repository, whether veteran or developer related
    • Anything else that might be used by an outside party to exploit/attack VA systems or veteran health information
  • Have a branch protection policy for your production and dev/test environments branches that includes required pull-request reviews
  • GitHub Advanced Security Code Scanning is enabled on your repository and in use
  • Have no open Dependabot alerts of Moderate severity or higher
  • Have no open Code Scanning alerts of Moderate severity or higher
  • Have no unremediated Secret Scanning alerts
  • Receive sign-off from your VA COR to open-source the repository on the issue (they can simply comment with their approval)

Once those prequisites have been met you can click here to open an issue to update your repository’s privacy setting

Return to Guides