White House Orders Agencies to Open Up (FOIA related)
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From: Greegor on 11 Dec 2009 10:06 They recently got reminded of this campaign promise and ponied up rather than face more embarrassing comments. Notice the date! http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/white-house-orders-agencies-to-open-up/ White House Orders Agencies to Open Up By Ryan Singel December 8, 2009 3:30 pm The Obama administration released a long-awaited openness directive Tuesday, ordering ornery federal agencies to comply with its government sunshine promises, including creating interactive open- government web pages and publishing three new raw-data sets in 45 days. CIO Vivek Kundra (left) and CTO Aneesh Chopra (center) explain the openess order in a webcast Tuesday morning. The so-called Open Government Directive (.pdf) aims to give rules to federal agencies to force them out of bureaucratic habits that keep government information away from the public eye. For instance, the directives tell agencies to begin publishing government data proactively, instead of waiting for outsiders to request the data through Freedom of Information Act requests. The move was heralded by the open-government group Sunlight Foundation. The directive shows the administration has carefully considered how to foster a government characterized by collaboration a government that engages citizens to participate in decision-making, foundation spokeswoman Gabriela Schneider said in a press release. Most significantly, the White House has given all of us the tools we need to hold them accountable for all of this. In a memo released on the first day in office, President Obama, whose campaign promised transparency in government, ordered the Office of Management and Budget to create rules for federal agencies. Agencies also have 60 days to launch open-government pages at the standardized URL of www.AgencyName.gov/open. There the agency has to talk about how it is opening up, allow the public to suggest new data to publish and interact with the agency. Additionally, each agency has to publish three new and substantive data sets in an open format within 45 days, and share them at the Data.gov website. The directive was announced by the White Houses technology team, including CIO Vivek Kundra, in a webcast Tuesday morning. Kundra says the directive isnt just an empty promise that will only be given lip service by bureaucracies that prefer the way they do things now. We have created a climate where cabinet secretaries are assigning very senior leaders, who are responsible for these projects, Kundra said. The directive also creates a master Open Government Dashboard at http://whitehouse.gov/open. The directive is intended to complement an earlier policy change from Attorney General Eric Holder, reversing the Bush administrations stance that government secrecy trumps openness in the handling of government sunshine requests. That change in the rules of how Freedom of Information Act requests are treated has seemed to get more documents with fewer redactions into the hands of requesters over the last year. But the feds cling to the same secrecy provisions as the Bush Administration in requests applying to torture and warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens. |