The nation’s first federal chief technology officer is leaving his post, the White House announced Friday. “As the federal government’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra did groundbreaking work to bring our government into the 21st century,” President Obama said in a statement. “Aneesh found countless ways to engage the American people using technology, from electronic health records for veterans, to expanding access to broadband for rural communities, to modernizing government records.” Chopra is considering running for lieutenant governor of Virginia, and he has been in conversations with influential political figures and donors, said a democratic official familiar with the situation, who…
Browsing: open government
A year has passed since the White House issued the Open Government Directive, laying out requirements for agencies to increase transparency, participation and collaboration. Tune in here at 2 p.m. for a White House progress report on the initiative, or join the Facebok discussion.
I reported yesterday on the Office of Management and Budget’s plan to review agencies’ progress toward their high-priority performance goals and post that information on the Web. I spoke with Peter Grace at HUD this morning and he said the site will be called USAperformance.gov and he expects it to be live by July. Shelley Metzenbaum of OMB would only say yesterday that it would be up this summer or this fall, so perhaps July is the goal, but they’re hedging their bets on when it will actually go live. Right now, the USAperformance.gov URL exists but is password protected.
Earlier I wrote about how the Environmental Protection Agency was asking for the public’s help in making the agency more open and transparent. It turns out that EPA isn’t alone. Twenty-five agencies have launched special websites through which people can submit and vote on ideas for how those agencies can expand and improve online access to information, better solicit feedback from the public and better engage with groups both inside and outside goverment. Twenty-three of the agencies are using a web platform developed by the General Services Administration to engage the public. By offering a single solution, GSA made it easier for…
The Environmental Protection Agency is asking for the public to help it comply with an Obama administration directive to make government operations more open and transparent. EPA has created a special website through which people can submit and vote on ideas for how the agency can solicit more feedback from the public, improve the quality and availability of information posted online and work better with groups inside and outside government. Ideas will be accepted until March 19. EPA will use the suggestions to help write its first-ever Open Government Plan, said Linda Travers, EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator, in an Feb. 10 e-mail to…
My colleague Elise Castelli posted a blog earlier this week about the White House’s launch of a new open government dashboard, which you may have missed for all of the Snowpocalypse/Snowmaggedon/snOMG news. Not much information is posted yet on the dashboard’s Web site, which is part of the administration’s move to make government operations more transparent. President Obama signed an executive order Dec. 8 giving agencies until April 7 to detail how they will open up data to the public, and more will be added to the dashboard once agencies have released their transparency plans. But until then, the first…
The federal government’s Washington offices may be closed today because of the Snowmageddon, but the White House sees only sunshine and rainbows for its Open Government Initiative. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted a blog entry today showing how agencies are faring in meeting the goals of the president’s Open Government Directive. According to Pfeiffer, and this stoplight-styled scorecard (think Bush-era President’s Management Agenda), federal agency performance toward meeting their goals has been green like the grass under the two feet of snow covering the White House lawn. And rainbows. If you count it up, all but four of…