A Federal Mandate To Open UpA Federal Mandate To Open Up

With the release in December of President Obama's Open Government Directive, the requirement for "opening" government processes and databases has shifted from planning to implementation. Federal agencies face an aggressive timeline for releasing data, engaging the public in new ways, and publishing the steps they will take to promote transparency and public participation in government.

The directive, released on Dec. 8, lays out 45-, 60-, 90-, and 120-day milestones that federal agencies are expected to meet. Two deadlines have already passed, and the others are rapidly approaching. As a first step, agencies had to release three "high value" data sets. Then, by Feb. 6, they were required to launch Web sites to inform the public of their open government activities, and the White House was due to introduce a Web dashboard for assessing their progress. By April 7, agencies are to publish their overall plans for complying with the directive.

There are signs of progress, but also plenty of bumps along the way. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, in a December interview, recalled how he initially met resistance when seeking to release certain healthcare data from government databases. "It's not done, can't do it," Kundra said he was told. And there were technical issues in surfacing data that had long been squirreled away.

Now, however, the Department of Health and Human Services is moving "full throttle" in developing and executing an open government plan, says CTO Todd Park. "The Open Government Directive put an injection of energy and White House support behind things that we think are critical," says Park, who's now spending more than half of his time on these efforts.

HHS has established a working group, headed by Park and acting assistant secretary for public affairs Jenny Backus, to develop its open government plan. Park is mindful that open government projects must align with his agency's broader mission. In one example, an online "health map" under development will let citizens, employers, and others better understand the healthcare systems in their local communities and how they compare with systems elsewhere. HHS has been working with McKinsey & Co., the nonprofit State of the USA, and the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine to work through which data sets to release, and how.

Part of the challenge is getting stakeholders on board. "You have to ask, 'What's the behavior model? How do we trigger awareness?'" Park says. HHS plans to engage business and community leaders to raise its chances of success.

What determines success in open government? The release of data sets and launch of "gov 2.0" Web sites with collaboration and other social media tools are only part of it. "The ultimate measure of success should be improvement in the fundamental efficiency and effectiveness of government," says Park.

But Park counsels patience in the early going. As required, HHS posted new data sets on Data.gov last month, including a list of animal drug products, two summaries of Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals data, insurance contacts for Medicare's prescription drug benefit, and summary data on Medicare claims. Yet some of that data is still buried in zipped Excel spreadsheets on HHS's site, rather than in machine-readable XML form on Data.gov. "It'll be a process of constant, ongoing iteration and improvement," says Park.

From The Top

The White House in December issued an open government progress report, with more than two dozen examples of steps federal agencies have taken. They include Virtual USA, a system in development by the Department of Homeland Security, eight states, and first responders to share information on power and water lines, helicopter landing sights, and other emergency information. Another example is the Department of Treasury's release of IRS statistics that show the migration patterns of tax-return filers as they move from state to state.

The White House's open government dashboard (due to have launched by Feb. 6) shows how well agencies measure up to the directive. In its initial iteration, the dashboard shows whether an agency has named a data integrity lead and created an open gov Web site. In the spirit of openness, it will encourage public input.

Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra wants to make sure that meeting the requirements set by the White House isn't merely a check-the-box compliance exercise. Indeed, Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio warns that an overemphasis on compliance could backfire. The risk, Di Maio says, is that agencies might choose the most expedient route over the one with the greatest potential for change.

The General Services Administration, meanwhile, will be providing agencies with the Ideascale crowdsourcing platform to support a five-week public dialogue on the agencies' open government plans once they're released in April. Among other things, agency sites will ask visitors what kind of information they'd like to see shared and how agencies can improve their interaction with the public online. "Every agency needs to think about what they want to get out of these engagements with the public, what they're looking to get feedback on, and how they moderate their public dialogue in an effort to get dynamic, two-way interaction going," says Dave McClure, associate administrator for the GSA's office of citizen services and communications.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to use the GSA tool. At first, it will ask the public what kinds of things it can do to be more open, transparent, and collaborative; later, it will post its own ideas and ask for comment. "We don't want to presuppose anything in the beginning," says DHS chief of staff for management Chris Cummiskey, who's heading up the agency's open government efforts.

Risks Of Openness

While the power of releasing data and increasing public engagement are evident to many agencies, so too are the security risks. "You always have to balance openness with the things our enemies could use against us, things that could affect privacy," White House cyber coordinator Howard Schmidt said in a January speech. "Every data set we generate is going to require someone to look at it with a critical eye."

Security restrictions that affect open government efforts include the Federal Information Security Management Act and a near-absolute ban on permanent Web cookies, making it difficult if not impossible to create personalized Web pages for individuals. And much government data is sensitive and has to be scrutinized before it's released. That includes attention to how data sets from different agencies might be used in combination.

"It's not as simple as saying, let's strip out all personal information," HHS CTO Park says, noting that researchers were able to identify users of Netflix's movie delivery service from anonymous rental data by matching it with other data available on the Web. "We're doing this at a tactical level as we go through initial data sets, but we are hard at work on a process that triple checks to make sure data is being made available in a way that doesn't breach privacy and security considerations."

Homeland Security manages reams of sensitive information, and its office of the CIO is putting into place a governance structure to determine what kind of information can be made public. "We need to be sensible about what we can and can't do and set expectations up front," Cummiskey says.

Data quality and formatting are other issues that government IT pros have to grapple with as they expose data that once stayed behind the firewall. The directive calls on agencies to ensure that the information they release conforms to Office of Management and Budget guidelines for information quality and to assign a senior official responsibility for data quality and objectivity of information on federal spending.

Organizational resistance--as federal CIO Kundra experienced firsthand--is the other complicating factor. Federal personnel tend to be risk averse. For that reason, it's important that agency leaders drive the message that increased openness, collaboration, and public participation require real change to processes and behavior.

At Homeland Security, Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute have made transparency part of their personal business. Just last week, Lute convened a meeting of DHS agencies to discuss open government and information sharing.

Some policy issues as well have yet to be resolved, from compliance with accessibility regulations to how open government meshes with the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires a drawn-out approvals process before engaging in online dialogue with citizens.

Get Involved

The White House will use some of the policy levers it has to reward agencies that embrace open government, to remove barriers that hold them back, and to put in place "platforms" that help agencies replicate the successes of others, federal CTO Chopra says.

Chopra has suggestions on how government IT pros can get involved:

Two months have passed since the release of the Open Government Directive, so the time for those and other steps is now. Says Chopra: "If your plan provides for alignment with the key priorities and the tools, principles, philosophies of open government, that's the heart of the directive."