Joining GSA's OpenGovernment Listserv focused on the Open Government Partnership

[Daniel Schuman]

Hi everyone,

The US-Open-Government listserv has existed since March 26, 2014, so we just celebrated a decade of existence. Congratulations everyone!  The google group was created to foster discussion on open government in the United States. In particular, it was intended to focus on the US government's open government plan, the open government initiative, FOIA efforts, open data projects, and citizen engagement. Honor of the first email goes to Cori Zarek, the then-policy advisor for opengov government for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

At times, this listserv has been a lively place for conversation. That was a norm set by the original founders, which included folks from the White House and at the organization OpenTheGovernment.org. Individuals and organizations are still encouraged to share news and information here and the government is encouraged to share and respond as well. We have fallen out of practice, particular over the last few years.

Recently, the US government stood up the General Service Administration's Open Government Secretariat, identified to "take charge of overseeing all domestic aspects within the international Open Government Partnership." Obviously, there are other components in the US federal government working on open government issues with civil society, but GSA is the government lead on OGP.

Many federal agencies have trouble using their official email accounts to access and use listservs that run on Google groups. I don't understand the technical details as to why, but you'll see that historically many government participants have used non .gov email accounts. To help address the issue, at least in the context of the OGP, GSA has set-up a listserv for civil society to use that government folks can access.

Here are instructions to join the public-facing GSA Open Govt Listserv:

• Send an email opengov-civ-subscribe-request@listserv.gsa.gov and include “Join: OpenGov-Civ” in the subject line, and no text in the body of the email.
• Reply “OK” to the auto-generated message you receive within 48hr.
• You will get a second auto-generated message letting you know that you have joined the OpenGov-Civ ListServ

I have been able to sign up without any problem. The GSA Open Government Secretariat is sharing information there. At least for the interim, I will share information shared there and elsewhere on this listserv. I encourage everyone to do the same.

The way we establish a norm of discussion is by routinely sharing information and providing responses. I hope folks will do so here and there.

At some point, we will have to decide whether it makes sense to have this listserv operate in parallel with GSA's listserv or to archive it. As this listserv was originally established by the government, there are some good arguments to consolidate into one place. There's also a good argument concerning being able to see all the archives, having a broad mission, and having some level of moderator control, and so on. Civil society control, however, is a fairly recent phenomenon, and that may not be a factor. Like I said, a discussion for another time.

For now, for those interested in domestic facing OGP issues, I encourage you to join the GSA Open Govt Listserv.

Thanks, everyone.

Daniel