Open Government Initiative: Phase II

Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, brings us an update on the Open Government Initiative:

Last week, the White House launched an unprecedented online process for public engagement in policymaking. That process began with a week of Brainstorming, hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration.

You have shared almost 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on ideas ranging from strategies for making government data more accessible to legal and policy impediments to transparency. Thank you!

The Brainstorming phase is drawing to an official close tonight at midnight. We are reviewing all material on the site in preparation for the Discussion Phase, which begins on Wednesday June 3rd. We’ll be distilling both the ideas from the Brainstorming and the comments from an online dialogue with government employees that took place earlier this spring on the MAX federal wiki. All comments from MAX will be publicly posted tomorrow on the Open Government website.

Our goal is to use the ideas from this first phase of the process as well as other input to inform deeper discussion on the Open Government blog in the Discussion phase. While the voting on the brainstorming submissions will be instructive, it will not determine which topics are discussed in the second phase. Rather, the Discussion is designed to dig in on harder topics that require greater exploration or refinement.

While we are doing our analysis of the first phase of brainstorming and moving on to the Discussion Phase next week, the Brainstorming has been lively and productive. So we will keep the Brainstorming site turned on for addition submissions through June 19th. While new postings may not feed into the Discussion or Drafting Phases, we’ll be on the lookout for interesting new posts. At the end of the public engagement process, all posted submissions will go up on the Open Government website. (For you records management fans, the Open Government website is run by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and subject to the Federal Records Act.)

The tight schedule of this process is designed to ensure that your ideas inform the development of open government recommendations and the writing of subsequent policy and the development of open government projects as soon as possible. So while we are keeping the Brainstorming open, we will also move on to the next phase of the process beginning on June 3rd.

The process of crafting open government policy will not end this week, this month, or this year. This is an ongoing effort, and your participation has been and will continue to be essential to its success.

Previously...

Note: Video included.

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/blog/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/05/21/Opening/

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Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Transparency and Open Government

Vivek Kundra, our Chief Information Officer, and Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, explain the 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.

As Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President says in the video below, 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.”

The Administration is committed to developing those recommendations in an open fashion. Consistent with the President’s mandate, we want to be fully transparent in our work, participatory in soliciting your ideas and expertise, and collaborative in how we experiment together to use new tools and techniques for developing open government policy.

Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. In a sea change from conventional practice, we are not asking for comments on an already-finished set of draft recommendations, but are seeking fresh ideas from you early in the process of creating recommendations. We will carefully consider your comments, suggestions, and proposals.

Here’s how the public engagement process will work. It will take place in 3 phases: Brainstorming, Discussion, and Drafting.

Beginning today, we will have a brainstorming session for suggesting ideas for the open government recommendations. You can vote on suggested ideas or add your own.

Then on June 3rd, the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase. On June 15th, we will invite you to use a wiki to draft recommendations in collaborative fashion.

These three phases will build upon one another and inform the crafting of recommendations on open government.

Also check out the Innovations Gallery and see some of the innovations and innovators across the Government who are already translating the values of open government into practice. For example, just today the CIO Council launched Data.gov. Data.gov is a one-stop repository of government information and tools to make that information useful. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Management and Budget today launched Regulations.gov Exchange, a website for taking public input on the best ways to achieve public participation in Federal agency rulemaking. These are just two of the many outstanding innovations featured in the Open Government Innovations Gallery.

The President has welcomed the open government innovations being developed across the Government and has encouraged each of his Cabinet departments to adopt more open government innovations in the coming year.

Thank you for participating. Open and effective government can only be achieved with everyone’s active engagement. We hope you will lend your insights, experience, and expertise to improve your government and strengthen democracy. Join the Brainstorming that has already begun!

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://opengov.ideascale.com/

How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?

A Message from the White House

You have shared almost 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on ideas ranging from strategies for making government data more accessible to legal and policy impediments to transparency. Thank you!

At the end of the public engagement process, all posted submissions will go up on the Open Government website. (For you records management fans, the Open Government website is run by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and subject to the Federal Records Act.)

Longer reports and papers can always be submitted through opengov@ostp.gov.

On January 21st, the President issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, calling for an unprecedented level of openness in government. In the memorandum, the President outlined three principles for promoting a transparent and open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Now, the President is calling on you to help shape how that commitment is fulfilled. This online brainstorming session, open from May 21st to 28th, 2009, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government.

This platform allows you to submit ideas, discuss and refine others’ ideas, and vote the best ones to the top. We are seeking innovative approaches to policy, specific project suggestions, government-wide or agency-specific instructions, and any relevant examples and stories relating to law, policy, technology, culture, or practice. The National Academy of Public Administration, a Congressionally chartered, non-profit, non-partisan institution, is hosting this brainstorming session on behalf of the White House.

The most important themes and ideas to emerge will provide the basis for two more stages of interaction: A Discussion Phase, when we will deepen the conversation about compelling topics raised during the brainstorming, and a Drafting Phase, when we will ask you to use a wiki to draft language for recommendations collaboratively.

Some questions to consider in formulating ideas include:

How might the operations of government be made more transparent and accountable?
How might federal advisory committees, rulemaking or electronic rulemaking be better used to drive greater expertise into decisionmaking?
What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decisionmaking and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in agencies?
What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
What is the best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration?
What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open government policies?
Please note: On Saturday morning, we made a small change to this site. Posting, commenting and voting on ideas now requires users to log in. This change was made in response to concerns that settings that allowed anonymous posting may also have allowed users to vote more than once on the same idea. Our privacy and moderation policies can be accessed here.

After searching, scroll down for results.

Getting Started
Here is a discussion question to get you started:
What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decisionmaking and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
While you’re here:

Search for Ideas to make sure that your idea or area of interest hasn’t already been covered.

Vote, Vote, Vote! Your votes are critical to ensuring that the best ideas “bubble up” to the top.

Add Your Idea by clicking on the “New Idea” button to the left.

Spread the Word! E-mail a link to this website to your network, and invite them to get involved.

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Wrap-Up-of-the-Open-Government-Brainstorming-Transparency/

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TUESDAY, JUNE 2ND, 2009 AT 10:05 PM
Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency
Posted by Beth Noveck
Last week the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) hosted the Open Government Brainstorm on behalf of the White House Open Government Initiative – the first of three phases in an unprecedented process of public engagement. The Brainstorm generated more than 1000 ideas to inform the crafting of recommendations on open government policy. Thank you to all who recognized the importance of this effort and participated thoughtfully.

Phase I was designed to elicit a wide array of actionable suggestions for creating a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. As we look toward tomorrow’s start of Phase II – the Discussion Phase - we have culled a short list of topics for deeper and more focused conversation from among the suggestions you posted during this Brainstorm, from those ideas shared by government employees during a similar online conversation in March, and from proposals submitted to “From The Inbox.”

We read and considered all the proposals. We took the voting into account when assessing your enthusiasm for a submission, but only somewhat in evaluating relevance. The ideas that received the most organized support were not necessarily the most viable suggestions.

Today, we want to share with you a little about what we’ve learned from you about transparency. Transparency is of vital importance. As the President emphasized in his Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act: “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, ‘sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.’ …At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.”
There were plenty of great ideas that we read but that unfortunately did not make sense to bring into the next phase, including those with no relation to transparency policy, endorsing a product, or describing legislative action outside the purview of the Executive branch. We are bracketing suggestions for long-range change, such as proposals that require a constitutional amendment in favor of working with those that can lead to change in the shorter term. We are also temporarily putting to one side suggestions about transparency in specific agencies (ie. environmental or food safety transparency, creating Facebook pages for mail carriers, greater budgetary transparency in the Central Intelligence Agency). We will hold onto these proposals for subsequent conversations involving the decision-makers from the relevant agencies. Some ideas (ie. on regulations.gov or open source software) labeled with “Transparency” will fit better in our later discussions about Participation and Collaboration.

Here are some examples of specific submissions, grouped by issue. We’ve attached a “mindmap” of the redacted transparency proposals so you can see a summary and overview of the themes that are emerging. We have also attached the National Academy of Public Administration’s analysis of the Brainstorm (pdf).

1) Transparency Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking?

Adopt 8 Open Government Data Principles (complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, license-free);
Adopt Carter Center Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information;
Crowdsourcing should be adopted as a principle and best practices around the use of crowdsourcing to evaluate data should be established;
Agencies should explain all policy decisions and the rationales behind them in readable language;
2) Transparency Governance: How do we institutionalize transparency across all government agencies and establish structures to ensure thoughtful and considered progress toward transparency?
Replicate Florida’s model of an Office of Open Government;
Establish a Transparency Officer/Open Government Officer and interdisciplinary team in each agency whose job it is to inventory and proactively make data available to the public. Transparency officer must not be an information technology expert only but someone knowledgeable about legal frameworks, such as Privacy and Information Quality;
Create a data governance program/framework in each agency to evaluate data quality and priorities;
Seek public input on data to be made transparent;
Identify candidate agencies or programs as pilots for transparency;
Use Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) to bring together government and public researchers to collaborate on making data more accessible;
Confer transparency/open government awards.
3) Information Access: How do we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of access to government information? How do we improve the Government’s ability to disclose information pro-actively and bring down the cost and burden of compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)?
Impose penalties on agencies not following FOIA or tolerating excessive delays. Look at India’s approach, in which government officials become personally liable and must pay fines if they do not act in a timely fashion;
Use visualization tools to show timeliness of FOIA processing in real time and track which official has responsibility for the request at any given time, i.e. workflow management;
Post frequently requested categories of information;
Require agencies to accept FOIA and Mandatory Declassification (MDR) requests via email;
Simplify implementation of FOIA;
Implement requirement to post disclosed information in electronic reading rooms;
Paper duplication costs should be reasonable. Electronic duplication should be free.
4) Data and Metadata: What technological approaches might be used to improve access to Government data? What Government-wide approaches to data and metadata should we be undertaking? How can we improve the usefulness of Data.gov, the Government’s new platform for access to data?

Inventory and prioritize agency data for publication in open, downloadable formats;
Set agency targets: by a given date, X percent of non-sensitive agency data should be online;
Use Data.gov as a repository of newly declassified information;
Make contributed data subject to a waiver of copyright and database rights using the “CCO” scheme from Creative Commons;
Standardize discovery and method calls to data sets;
Offer a crawling program to identify data that agencies could make available;
Establish a monitoring program to ensure that sensitive data is not released;
Collaborate with private sector on conferences on visualization to design tools for Data.gov;
Adopt data dictionaries to ensure that terms have the same meaning across agencies;
Adopt better software for comparing relevance and meaning of documents to make government information more searchable;
More RSS data feeds and other points of access to government information;
Government should create permalinks on the paragraph level to make documents easier to cite;
Maintain a transparency dashboard to show progress toward transparency, e.g. the number of documents released;
Bring government services online and make them reusable by the private sector; if citizens own the services they should be able to build on top of them. This requires a “Services Oriented Architecture” approach (see: VA Loan Guaranty example);
Digitize all government research reports and make them available free via NTIS (the National Technical Information Service);
Convert Depository Libraries around the country into Regional Data Centers;
Make the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the off-site electronic backup data center for all agency e-record systems.
5) Open Government Operations: What are the strategies for making the workings of government more open and accountable? How do we balance openness and other constraints, like privacy and efficiency?

Create a “MyGov.gov” customized data feed/alert system that reaches across all federal agencies; i.e. create a “Citizens Portal”;
Publish a directory of who works in government. Agencies state there are legal issues and policies in place that prohibit them from posting their organization charts. Changing this might help increase transparency;
Publish a list of everyone who meets with the President;
Allow government employees to speak to journalists more freely to foster news-gathering;
Electronic voting machine hardware and software, from the machine in the polling booth to the collection systems used to collate results, should be subject to publication and verification;
Executive branch documents, such as the Federal Register and the Compilation of Presidential Documents, should be made available in downloadable and accessible formats;
Use innovative, new technology to create more transparent, effective, and efficient procurement strategies;
Require that all public agency meetings be webcast. Require that all Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) meetings be webcast;
Create weekly progress reports in which government employees rate and rank each other’s announcements as a mechanism to select the best ideas to report to the Secretary;
Every agency should develop a “Web 2.0” communications strategy to set forth how it will use new media to accomplish its mission;
Identify common innovation platforms — the basic frameworks needed across agencies for open government — and invest in building those.
While Phase I focused on idea gathering, Phase II focuses on defining the challenges in greater depth. We will be asking for your help with fleshing out the issues, potential solutions, and the pros and cons of proposed approaches.
Tomorrow, June 3rd, we will invite your comments on the first blog post of the Discussion Phase. The first set of posts will focus on each of the five transparency themes (principles, governance, access, data, operations) listed above, followed by a series of posts on participation and collaboration.
The goal of Phase II is to explore proposals for a Government-wide framework to achieve transparency, participation and collaboration. We want your help with translating good ideas into concrete, measurable and cost-effective solutions.

Beth Noveck is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government.

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