Open Government: Implementation Guidance

The White House released its long-awaited implementation guidance for President Obama’s Open Government initiative, along with links to ongoing agency initiatives and a “Progress Report to the American People.” The guidance lays out actions and timetables. The White House created a convenient landing page for all of this stuff (and all agencies will have to create their own "open government" landing pages by February 6^th).

The Sunlight Foundation put together a convenient timeline on when different things are due.

Since so much has already been written about the guidance already, I’ll just highlight some links to particularly helpful explanatory pieces:

• Federal News Radio: “Open Government Initiative Puts Agencies on the Clock”
• Tech President (probably the most comprehensive piece so far, if you only want to read one article): The Open Government Initiative Has Dropped: Here’s What’s In It and Why It’s a Big Deal”
• NextGov: “White House Issues Demanding Open Government Directive”
• Huffington Post: “Open Government Directive: Obama Moves on Transparency Promise”

There’s also been a lot on Twitter and Facebook in terms of comments and questions. The two that keeps cropping up are: “Where is the accompanying funding, training, and staffing commitments?” And: “Who is the lead in the agencies – CIOs, public affairs, policy shops, or new media shops?”

Figuring this out quickly will be important, since agencies have to put together Open Government Plans by April 7, 2010 and seek “extensive” public, employee, and stakeholder input in developing that plan.

I also did a presentation this morning to a conference, aptly titled “Obama Administration: A Status Update on Its Open Government Initiative,” so if you prefer reading PowerPoints than text, this is the place to go!