Open Government: Taking Stock, Looking Forward

Beth Simone NoveckU.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer & Director, White House Open Government

Initiative

Bringing Institutional Innovation to the Public Sector through Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration

• First Executive Memorandum

• Bringing change to Washington and breaking with 8 years of secrecy

• Articulating 3 principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration

• Transparency promotes accountability

• Participation strengthens decisions

• Collaboration enables others to help

Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government

Jan. 21 Presidential Memorandum on Transparency & Open Government

Early Milestones“The Obama administration is well on course to be the most open in modern times.”

-The New York Times

•Nation’s First Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer

•White House Open Government Initiative to Drive & Coordinate•DOJ Issues Pro-Transparency Guidelines for Freedom of Info. Act

•Recovery.gov to enable Americans to track the Recovery•Open for Questions and New Media driven engagement•Data.gov to bring more government information online•Open policymaking forums•Broadband.gov•HHS Launches Competition for H1N1 PSA •White House announces unprecedented release of visitor logs

Proliferating Opportunities for Open PolicymakingTapping the Intelligence and Expertise of the American People

Open Government * Declassification * Cookies

Next Steps in Open Government: Unleashing Innovation Across Government

Open Government Policy

Open Government in Service of National Priorities

Open Government Platforms

Next Steps in Open Government Policy

Instilling a Culture of Openness and Transparency across GovernmentInstilling a Culture of Openness and Transparency across Government

Open Government Policy

Coordinate policy on transparency, participation and collaboration

Coordinate policy on transparency, participation and collaboration

Require policy, legal, and technology leadership in every agency to develop Open Government Plans with public input

Require policy, legal, and technology leadership in every agency to develop Open Government Plans with public input

Open Government in Service of National Priorities

Open Government Platforms

Open GovernmentInitiative

Drive distributed culture changeDrive distributed culture change

Open Government Directive• The thousands of ideas, blog posts and wiki entries have directly informed the crafting of an OMB Directive on Open Government

• It will begin with an idea championed by the public during the brainstorm phase - instilling a culture of open government by requiring each agency’s leadership to develop its own Open Government plan

• As called for by the public, those plans will be subject to public consultation and comment prior to drafting and subsequent to their implementation

• The plans will require agencies to develop a schedule for publishing data online in raw, structured, machine-readable formats based on priorities and to undertake participation and collaboration initiatives

• Establishes a comprehensive review of the Administration’s information policies

• In short, the forthcoming Open Government Directive will represent another key milestone in the President’s ongoing strategy to bring change to Washington and innovation to government institutions

Achieving National PrioritiesImproving everyday living through open ways of workingImproving everyday living through open ways of working

Open Government Policy

Patent Office data transparency builds businesses Patent Office data transparency builds businesses

Apps for America!; Apple iTunes U Supports Continuity of Learning

Apps for America!; Apple iTunes U Supports Continuity of Learning

Open Government in Service of National Priorities

Open Government Platforms

Transparency

Participation

Collaboration

Consumer Product Safety consumer opinion forums; Redoing the Federal Register to enhance

Consumer Product Safety consumer opinion forums; Redoing the Federal Register to enhance

Open Government Projects•Veteran Benefits: Veterans Administration challenges 19,000 employees to cut the backlog for Veteran’s benefits

•Energy Independence: DoE supports 100 MPG X-Prize

•National Security: Department of Defense launches Aristotle expert networking across the Department to connect scientists and technologists to solve problems

•Healthcare: Department of Health and Human Services hosts first Code-A-Thon, bringing together open source developers to enhance and build upon CONNECT, a software gateway for nationwide health information

•Entrepreneurship: Business.gov connecting the public to one another

Open Government PlatformsFacilitate Open and Collaborative Ways of WorkingFacilitate Open and Collaborative Ways of Working

Open Government Policy

Policy

Process

Technology

Policy

Process

Technology

Facilitate the reuse of best practices through a platform for open government tools

Facilitate the reuse of best practices through a platform for open government tools

Open Government in Service of National Priorities

Open Government Platforms

Open GovernmentPlatforms

Open Government

Transition to open and collaborative ways of working.

Platforms to Instill a Culture of OpennessPlatforms to Instill a Culture of Openness

Open Data

Open Spending

Open Participation

Open Expertise & Peer Re

view

Open Grant-Making Platfo

rm

Open Problem-Solving

Open Data

Open Spending

Open Participation

Open Expertise & Peer Re

view

Open Grant-Making Platfo

rm

Open Problem-Solving

Open and Collaborative Pra

cticesOpen and Coll

aborative Practices

22

11

Make it easy and cost-effective

for any agency to implement open government priorities.

• Launched June 30, 2009

• 30 million+ hits since launch

• Measures performance against “on-time”,“on-budget”, and CIO evaluation

• Builds on the success of Shinseki review halting 45 current projects

IT Dashboard Building a Culture of Accountability

Source: www.whitehouse.gov & it.usaspending.gov

Open Policymaking

Brainstorming

Discussion

Drafting

Why Open Government Matters: Connecting Institutions to Networks to Take Action and Solve Problems•Collaborative democracy at the center of the administration’s governing philosophy.

•Institutional innovation to produce open ways of working.

•Recognizing that government does not have all the answers and public officials need to draw on what citizens know. 

•Not to aggregate preferences but to divvy up roles and tasks and share in the hard work of governance together.

Harvard “Group Brain Project”Harvard “Group Brain Project”

Source: ITIF Report “The Atlantic Century”, February, 2009

“I ran for President because I believe that we

cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them

together.”

“I ran for President because I believe that we

cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them

together.”–President Barack Obama, May 21, 2009

What Can You Do to Design 21st Century Democracy?: We are Just at the Beginning!

•Transparency: Identify 5 data sets where transparency will achieve an important policy objective in the same way that the Toxic Release Inventory encourages companies to reduce their use and emission of toxic chemicals voluntarily; Create a document management system that will decrease FOIA requests while increasing access to information.

•Participation: Design the best open policymaking platform for effective rulemaking; design the best processes for open grantmaking.

•Collaboration: Design an IT-based system for managing chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma that improves health outcomes while reducing costs by a third . Establish a prize for the best automated, online mentoring system to promote entrepreneurship.