This is a posting courtesy of Lisa Bingham–thanks for sending it along!
Last week, I was on a conference call with senior White House officials in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, and Greg Nelson, Associate Director White House Office of Public Engagement). I write to share information about an exciting new experiment the Obama Administration is conducting to develop policy on open, transparent, participatory, and collaborative governance. If you are interested in civic engagement, collaborative public management, public-private partnerships, dispute resolution in government, freedom of information, or access to government data, this is an initiative you may wish to participate in. There is a transformational change in the use of technology underway in this administration.
Last week, the White House launched http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/, a website to engage people on the forthcoming Open Government Directive under development. In collaboration with the National Academy of Public Administration, OSTP will be conducting a brainstorming exercise to develop the content of the Open Government Directive OMB will issue. This exercise has three stages.
1. Until June 3rd, you can submit comments and vote on ideas.
2. From June 3rd until June 15, there will be discussion of the ideas submitted.
3. Beginning June 15, there will be an online shared drafting exercise. You can participate at the following website: http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/panel.do?id=4049.
That website also has links to two demonstration projects for open government, www.data.gov and www.regulations.gov. Data.gov is intended to be a place where agencies can make datasets publicly available in a format the public (and we!) can use. There will be more demonstration projects posted; these are just the first.
If you are interested in the commentary that OSTP has received to date on the Executive Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, visit http://www.ostp.gov/cs/opengov/from-the-inbox/.
An update for everyone: the Open Government website has been under a concerted spam attack for the past 48 hours as part of a smear campaign regarding the President’s citizenship. You may find it easiest to use the site if you select the option of organizing ideas by those with the most votes first, rather than most recent.