HHS

On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a call for increased openness in government.

While there is certainly a place for these types of organizations and goals, innovation – and the creativity that goes along with it – can be applied to a myriad of organizational issues that may not garner the same attention. In addition, client feedback and user-centered thinking are valuable sources of innovation, which anyone can tap.

Innovation might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of training or loan repayment or immigration information, but that’s exactly what’s taking place with meaningful improvements for end users.

The Obama Administration announced today a scorecard of the quality of the plans submitted earlier this month by 29 major agencies. Using a checklist of 30 criteria, the scorecards show all agencies rating either a “yellow” or a “green” on their scorecards. These plans are being referred to as “version 1.0.”

Next week, agency Open Government Plans are due to the Office of Management and Budget.

A series of presentations at the annual conference of the National Academy of Public Administration focused on the complicated management challenges all levels of government will be facing upon the passage of any health care reform legislation. As one participant noted: “There’s too much of a view that programs are self-executing and you just need more inspectors general and audits. . . that happened with the Recovery Act.” The consensus seemed to be that this assumption clearly won't work for health care reform!