Introducing CFPB Open Tech

Welcome to CFPB Open Tech, the new home on the web for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to share and discuss the work we do with technology to improve the financial lives of consumers throughout the country.

At the CFPB, we value openness and transparency. Additionally, one of our core values is innovation. Our organization embraces new ideas and technology. We are focused on continuously improving, learning, and pushing ourselves to be great. A natural result is that we are strong proponents of open source software, both using it in our organization and releasing software we build. You can see more details about our philosophy on using and releasing open source software by reading our Source Code Policy.

Along with software development, this website will also feature the CFPB’s design work, which is led by a great team of graphic and user experience designers. We’ll talk about our design process and the value of design in helping consumers to understand the risks and benefits of their financial choices. Too often, financial products, services, contracts, and terms are unfamiliar and confusing. Good design can help consumers make the right choices for themselves and their families.

The CFPB has its own internal design and development teams. The mission of the Bureau is to ensure that markets for consumer financial products and services are fair, transparent, and competitive, and we rely on intense collaboration between the technology team and our expert policy staff to accomplish that mission. Financial products are increasingly technology-based, and having an in-house team of designers and developers at the CFPB enables us to keep pace with today’s market and develop new tools that help consumers succeed in their financial lives.

Our hope is that by releasing as much of our code as possible here on GitHub, we can learn from and share with other agencies and individuals across the country (or even the world), in the spirit of open source software development and open government. We’ve already accepted a pull request from a member of the public.

From time to time, we’ll also discuss this work on consumerfinance.gov, but here you’ll find more detail about choices, processes, and techniques.

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we are committed to building world-class technology tools for the public and our colleagues. We look forward to sharing our work with you.