Government software compliance is not limited to passing a final review before launch; it begins with how code is written, dependencies are managed, and decisions are documented. An article published on the JetBrains blog, in the context of the Qodana platform, presents five practical areas that public-sector software development teams can use to reduce noncompliance risks, while legal requirements vary from one country to another.
This issue carries additional weight because government systems handle large amounts of personal and sensitive data. The article cites the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 as stating that the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.99 million. It also refers to a Ponemon Institute and Globalscape report that estimated the cost of noncompliance to be 2.71 times higher than the cost of compliance. These figures come from the reports on which the source relies and are not an independent estimate by JetBrains.
1. Security and Data Protection
Risks begin with familiar mistakes such as storing credentials in code, weak input and output validation, or using outdated and weak encryption algorithms. This may expose personal information or undermine the controls of security frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27001, threatening certification and institutional reputation.
Rules vary by jurisdiction. Public institutions in European Union countries are subject to the GDPR, while central authorities in the United Kingdom are subject to requirements including the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, and National Audit Office standards. In the United States, frameworks include the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, and FedRAMP.
In practice, the article recommends introducing privacy and defense measures into the software development lifecycle from the outset, rather than postponing them until testing or immediately before deployment. The measures mentioned include storing credentials securely, managing user consent clearly, conducting penetration tests before launch, and continuing automated testing. External dependencies should also be treated as active risks, not neutral components.
2. Contracts, Procurement, and Open-Source Dependencies
Software that manages government procurement or supplier agreements may cause contractual problems, such as failing to meet service levels or delivery acceptance criteria. The presence of a secret API key in a development branch, combined with the absence of SAST scanning, may also allow code that does not meet delivery requirements to pass through.
Open-source dependencies add another legal and technical layer, as their licenses may include provisions such as copyleft or restrictions on commercial use. This may conflict with procurement rules or lead to intellectual property disputes. The article therefore suggests conducting automated license scanning at the dependency level, alongside quality gates within CI/CD that prevent noncompliant code from moving to the delivery stage.
3. Auditable Evidence and Accountability
In audits, it is not enough to say that controls exist; controls unsupported by evidence may be treated as unsubstantiated. The article argues that relying on manual approvals and inconsistent results among quality assurance teams increases the likelihood of audit failure and heightens technical debt risks.
The proposed practical solution is to create a digital record linking tests, traceability, and scan results to stages of the development lifecycle. This helps produce automated audit reports and provide objective evidence when reviewing controls such as NIST guidelines for federal systems in the United States, or ISO/IEC 27001 requirements and National Audit Office standards in the United Kingdom.
4. Continuity and Long-Term Support
The failure of a government system may halt essential services for citizens, so priority should not be limited to a quick fix that accumulates future problems. Unsupported open-source components may prevent patches from being applied, while transferring a system between contractors or different teams becomes more dangerous when vulnerabilities and the context behind decisions are undocumented.
Suggested practices include tracking the currency of dependencies, using the latest stable version or available patch release, reducing the number of external dependencies, applying unit and integration tests, and using static analysis to detect code errors early. These practices are also related to business continuity requirements, including ISO 22301.
5. Infrastructure and Policy Governance
Development tools and cloud services must align with government security baselines and information technology policies. The article mentions, for example, the Government Cloud First policy in the United Kingdom, as well as restrictions that public authorities may impose on the use of SaaS services or external cloud dependencies, particularly when they handle sensitive data or involve FedRAMP requirements.
From an operational perspective, the loss of institutional knowledge poses a risk to long-lived systems. Documenting the context of decisions, workarounds, and the reasons behind them helps new teams maintain the infrastructure. Locally hosted tools or tools isolated from external networks may also be suitable when policy prevents reliance on an external cloud.
What Changes in Practice?
The most important takeaway is not to purchase a particular tool, but to turn compliance into continuous controls within the development environment: security and license scanning, secret detection, dependency tracking, automated testing, and policies that can be enforced and documented in CI/CD. This approach reduces reliance on delayed manual review, but it does not eliminate the need to interpret legal requirements and assign human responsibilities. The article also does not establish that these measures guarantee full compliance in every country; it explicitly notes that rules vary according to location and the policies in force. Within this context, Qodana is presented as a tool that can be integrated into development environments and integration pipelines, a promotional aspect that should be separated from the general principles that can be applied using different tools.