Help Evaluate OpenTheGovernment.org

[Amy Alyce Fuller]

We are excited to announce that we have posted a new proposal to evaluate the openness of federal agencies for public comment. The proposal is posted here: http://bit.ly/ogov-feedback, and will be open for comment through Monday, October 4. We welcome feedback from anyone with an interest in making sure our government is open and accountable, including agency personnel, Administration officials, good government advocates, and others, and will consider and respond to all of the relevant feedback we receive.

 

The proposal is a part of a project by OpenTheGovernment.org to evaluate the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative. project was launched with an audit of the Open Government Plans agencies were required to develop by April 7, 2010, under the Open Government Directive (OGD). Initial results of the audit were released in May, and updated results were released at the end of June. To complete the evaluations, OpenTheGovernment.org relies on a group of volunteers with experience working with agencies and evaluating information policies from nonprofit groups, academia, and other organizations that serve the public interest– propose an evaluation framework that measures agencies according to the availability of information critical for accountability, progress against the open government plan, and how accessible information is on the agency website.

 

Development of the evaluation was led by faculty from the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies at Miami University of Ohio and the Center for Library and Information Innovation at the University of Maryland. The evaluation framework measures each agency examined according to the availability of information identified by the nongovernment openness community as critical for accountability, progress in implementation of the agency’s open government plan, and the accessibility of information on the agency’s website.

 

Read the full release here: http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/PublicCommentRelease-Final.pdf 

 

Participating Organizations:  American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, faculty at the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies at Miami University of Ohio, Center for Democracy and Technology, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, OMB Watch, OpenTheGovernment.org, POGO (Project On Government Oversight), Union of Concerned Scientists, faculty and students at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, and volunteer Giovanni Piazza, Digital Strategist and Knowledge Executive.