In January 2009, President Obama issued the Open Government Directive, calling for government agencies to take action to become more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. We issued “Version 1” of HHS’s Open Government Plan on April 7, 2010. This plan has served as our guiding star as we’ve worked energetically to “liberate” HHS data and improve how HHS collaborates with the public and external stakeholders. We are now working on “Version 2” of our Open Government Plan, and would love to get your help in developing it. In particular, we’d love to get your input on the following questions:

1. Are there any policy development or program implementation areas which should be areas of particular focus for our open government efforts?
2. Are there new forms of public participation with which HHS should experiment? What kinds of new or improved techniques can we utilize to interact in the most meaningful possible ways with the American people?
3. How can we more effectively reach non-traditional audiences in order to obtain the broadest level of input possible into HHS planning and implementation processes?

If you could share your thoughts with us on these questions (and any other areas of open government interest), we’d appreciate it very much – please send your thoughts to us at open@hhs.gov. We’re also working with open government stakeholder and advocacy groups on tapping other sources of public input as we engage in plan development. Once we’ve received a full range of inputs from external and internal audiences, we’ll assemble a draft plan. By late March, we’ll make our draft plan available on this website for public comment and feedback.

We look forward to working with you on this effort – thanks so much in advance for your help!