Flagship Initiatives Shine in Open Government Plans

Ever since Open Government Day – the 120 day deadline in the OGD when agencies had to release Open Government Plans – I’ve been pouring over them hoping to get a better understanding of how openness is going to be implemented. If we are to judge government openness by the barrage of documents we received last Wednesday, then we open government advocates ought to be very happy! But what are these documents made of, anyway? A word cloud illustrates it quite well – all the buzzwords that you would expect: Information, government, data, open, public.

Gigglegate: What was so funny?

John Stewart’s Daily Show coverage of the White House Open Government Directive hones in on what everyone’s asking:

‘What was so funny?’

Quotable:

Huge event yesterday. ‘Open for Questions,’ a new experiment in open government debuted on the whitehouse.gov Website, hosted by Kevin Smith, Mike D, and Indian George Clooney. It was, as you can imagine, HIGH-larious.

In the spirit of open government, we’d like an official response from the White House.

Guesses on Gigglegate?

New GovFresh White House Open Government site

You can now follow the latest news related to the White House Open Government Initiate (OGI) on GovFresh at whitehouse.govfresh.com.

The new site includes:

  • Latest OGI GovFresh posts.
  • Links to OGI Twitter and official RSS feed.
  • OGI ‘Chatter’ from Twitter, the White House blog and elsewhere on the Web.

White House announces ‘Open Government Directive’

The White House today announced its Open Government Directive, instructing agencies to open their operations to the public and providing a framework for doing so. The directive was accompanied by a Open Government Progress Report to the American People.

From the White House:

The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration are at the heart of this directive. Transparency promotes accountability. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise to government initiatives. Collaboration improves the effectiveness of government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the federal government, across levels of government, and between the government and private institutions.

Full text of White House ‘Open Government Progress Report to the American People’

From the White House’s new ‘Open Government Progress Report to the American People:’

For too long, the American people have experienced a culture of secrecy in Washington, where information is locked up, taxpayer dollars disappear without a trace, and lobbyists wield undue influence For Americans, business as usual in Washington has reinforced the belief that government benefits the special interests and the well connected at the expense of the American people.

This progress report offers the American people a snapshot of the progress to date, highlights of the Administration’s new open government policy framework—the Open Government Directive —together with a road map for what’s to come.

White House Advisors on Open Government Initiative

On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, the President issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government and called for recommendations for making the Federal government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. On May 21, 2009, the Administration kicked off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. As Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President said, we are proud to announce an important next step in this historic call to action one that will help us achieve a new foundation for our government a foundation built on the values of transparency, accountability and responsibility.