Agencies Release Open Government PlansAgencies Release Open Government Plans

Federal agencies marked a milestone Wednesday in Obama administration efforts to increase government transparency by unveiling plans to improve the transparency of government operations and data and increase engagement with the public.

The government-wide release of open government plans coincided with a deadline under the Open Government Directive, White House-issued guidance requiring government agencies to take a deep look at and plot out an open government strategy.

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon, Norm Eisen, White House special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, said the White House was thus far "encouraged" by agency efforts, saying that they demonstrated a "hunger to break down walls that have too long stood between the government and the people."

The actual open government plans are largely strategic in nature, outlining how, from organizational and management perspectives, the agencies plan to comply with the spirit of the Open Government Directive. However, on a more tangible front, agencies also announced "flagship initiatives" that are supposed to be representative of the agencies' open government efforts going forward.

For example, the Food and Drug Administration is embarking on a major new public-facing performance measurement initiative called FDA Track that will eventually show the FDA's progress toward meeting its goals on more than 300 measurements across the FDA's numerous constituent groups.

"Our measures are monthly, there are now more of them, and they're really targeted to things we think really matter," Joel Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of the FDA, said in a Webcast announcing the FDA's open government plans. "For a long time, FDA has been seen as a black box. There's the potential with FDA Track to show the public, office by office, exactly what's going on." The FDA also announced that by fall it will release a downloadable, machine-readable data stream of food and drug recalls.

Among the highlights of other open government efforts being announced:

"I think it's an incredibly important shift in how we think about government. Over time, government has seemed more and more remote to citizens, but is simultaneously taking on ever more complex challenges," HHS CTO Todd Park said in a Webcast announcing his agency's plans, pointing to complicated areas of governance like food safety, combating pandemics, and carrying out the healthcare overhaul. "I can't imagine tackling those challenges without engaging the public."

Now that the agencies have released their open government plans, over the next three weeks federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and others will be evaluating those plans based on explicit requirements put forth in the Open Government Directive. On May 1, they'll integrate the results of that analysis into the open government dashboard, a Web site that tracks how well agencies are keeping up with their end of the bargain, and they'll submit a report to the President on the initial successes and failures of the effort.

In turn, those results will be used to inform the next steps government leadership can take to spur more transparency and openness. At the same time, agencies will also be gathering input on their plans -- which are currently technically in draft form -- in order to tweak those plans with finishing touches. "We refer to this as 'version 1.0' of the open government activity," Chopra said on the conference call.

Whether agencies will meet with the spirit of the directive, however, remains to be seen. "The inconsistency in agency plans can be maddening to those of us in the open government community," OMB Watch executive director Gary Bass said in a statement. "Advocates want more than statements and rhetoric; they want actual data that is timely, high-quality, searchable, and meaningful to all Americans."