The White House Reflects on Year One of the Open Government Directive

As I noted in my earlier post today it is the one year anniversary of the Open Government Directive (OGD). While the effort has been a success in year one (I gave it a B grade) it clearly has plenty of room for growth. The White House team of Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein took time today to discuss OGD, and to take questions through Facebook. Check out the video as well as my comments on the key points below.

• Cass Sunstein began by stating President Obama’s goals were:
  • To get information across to the public that they could readily find and use.
  • To gather dispersed knowledge from all citizens, involving citizens in the process of government.
  • “Use sunlight as a disinfectant”. In other words, making government more transparent to inform citizens and to encourage good behaviors by all in government.
• The IT Dashboard has been able to reduce the budget of IT projects by nearly $2 billion dollars. The delivery of IT projects has also been cut down from 2+ yearson average to approximately 8 months on average.
• The status of all agency’s progress is available on the Open Government Dashboard. Not every agency is on schedule on all targets but the majority are doing well.
• My question regarding the usefulness of the data sets that are available was answered during the session. Yes, we live in a time where any average citizen can ask a question of the White House and get your questions answered. This is not simply marketing of the government, this is government in action.

The entire video is 30 minutes in length but definitely worth the time.

John