Introducing the Model Open Government Directive for Local Government

In December, Kevin Curry, Alissa Black, Scott Primeau, and I began working on a model open government directive while at Citycamp Colorado. After a flurry of work over the last month, we, with the help of a few dozen additional open government advocates, are able to bring you the model directive for local government. This directive will help municipalities and state governments bring about open government in their communities.

As we state in the comments to the directive’s introduction:

The model Local Open Government Directive is intended to be an executive initiated order or directive to the local government under the executive’s legal authority. An executive leader, such as a mayor, should use this model to adopt a directive for the city to help institutionalize open government principles within the city government. This model may be tailored to meet the needs of the particular locality.

We modified, tailored, and improved the Federal open government directive for local government. I encourage you to share this model directive with leaders in your communities and to lend support to our global open government efforts. In partnership with OpenPlans, we are hosting the directive at opengovernmentinitative.org. In the next couple of days, you will find multiple versions of the directive to fit your needs for sharing the directive with others.

In addition, our friends at the Sunlight Foundation have created a site where you can sign up to show your support for this effort. Please sign up at http://publicequalsonline.com/localopengovdirective/.

Finally, over the next few weeks and months, we intend to continue to create supporting materials and to draft model open government legislation to help institutionalize open government at all levels. Together we can make transparency, participation, and collaboration possible in our governments. If you are interested in getting more involved, please join the Open Government Initiative group.

In addition to Kevin, Alissa, and Scott, I’d like to particularly thank Philip Ashlock, Nicole Aro, and Sean Hudson. I am forgetting a number of people, but thanks to everyone that participated in the Open Government Initiative group.

This post is a cross post from http://citycamp.govfresh.com/model-local-open-government-directive/.