Aneesh Chopra: Eating our own Dog food

At the Gov 2.0 Summit, Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra discussed the forthcoming Open Government Directive. Confirmed on the 120 day deadline set by the President to provide recommendations, Chopra said from day one, we have to better engage the public. Eat our own dogfood.

What happened in the days and weeks to follow fell just short of a “wiki government.” The result is “weeks away” in what will become the Open Government Directive.

Featured pillars of the Directive –

Structured approach not tied to any particular WH program or platform or explicit policy – Agencies should maintain and uphold accountability for the spirit of open government. The goal is to Hardwire the Accountability of agencies for open government.

What we should expect to see in the Directive –

1. Structured schedule of when and how data will be released to the public in a machine readable format
2. Agencies must articulate how they plan to engage the public in policy-making (burst the DC policy bubble)
3. Provisioned set of platforms (beyond data.gov, it dashboard) that will improve processes and make work easier and more efficient.

Chopra’s message is all a part of facilitating a Government that Works.

So what are you doing in your agency/organization?