Require all agencies to submit a plan for open government

shaaslyons

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Require all agencies to submit a plan for how they will incorporate open government activities into their missions. Within 180 days, agencies will produce a plan to integrate public involvement and collaboration into all relevant systems [human resources, planning and budget]. Agencies must demonstrate that internal and external stakeholders participate in the development of the plans. Each agency must designate an appropriate person in the Office of the Secretary to produce the plan.

This recommendation was developed in April 2009 by federal agency managers attending "Champions of Participation" http://www.americaspeaks.org/champions

Why Is This Idea Important?

In order to meet the goals of the Open Government Directive, it will be essential to support a “culture change” across federal agencies by establishing government-wide systems.

Idea # 24Strategic Planning and Budgeting, champions of participation, americaspeaks, demos, everyday democracy, harvard, plan, strategy, participation, collaboration

Comments

solorzanomilton 9 months ago

I might suggest making the plans opt-out, that is, forcing each agency to identify what information they will not release to the public, and why. So, in addition to a government-wide collection of plans, we also have a government-wide collection of 'things we don't want to talk about,' which should give investigative reporters plenty to work with.

jgoldman 9 months ago

I think the other thing to keep in mind is that this isn't just about information and transparency. Far more important is that they have a plan for how they will engage the public in participatory and collaborative processes for program delivery and policy development.

Johnruuu 9 months ago

I want to be clear before I case anything.

Your various websites state:
"This conference brought together nearly two dozen federal managers and employees to discuss collaboration and information exchange on their public engagement efforts within their agencies. Held at Aspen Wye River in June 2006."

Then in 2009 u claim: Federal managers and staff from 23 different agencies and offices across the federal government attended."

and then your organization saysin 2009:
"Federal Agency Managers and Staff
Weigh-In on Open Government Agenda
Nineteen senior leaders from 13 federal agencies and departments came together on May 12, 2009, to offer ideas to the Open Government Directive."

We would like to know who these couple of dozen federal managers and staff are and/or, more recently, who the 19 senior leaders from 13 federal agencies are please?

And why is the participation dropping?

jgoldman 9 months ago

If you download the reports from the 2009 conference you will see the full list of who attended. Participation wasn't dropping -- rather we focused outreach on different audiences. In March, primarily a group of managers and staff and in May primarily a group of political appointees and senior executive staff.

chaodown 9 months ago

Government agencies love to write plans. Implementing: NOT SO MUCH.

johnruuu 9 months ago

Yes, agreed with chaodown in his statement and would add the following.

All of the Government's Agencies Mission Statements should NOT, as your post states, include requirements for open government activities. Each Agency has totally and unique missions and I want them focused on their missions and be held accountable for their assigned Missions.

Also, think about--in your post--who will accept, evaluate, monitor and oversee (police) all of the agencies proposed individual plans? That's a very potential big task, although not say to that something or some methodology shouldn't be considered and some criteria established for public engagement.

You have an enormous list of 'partners' and 'sponsors':

Academy of Natural Sciences
American Camping Association
American Institute of Architects
The Anthem Foundation of Ohio
Architecture 2030
Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
Big Horn Center for Public Policy
Blue Shield of California Foundation
British National Health Service
The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund
California Community Foundation
The California Endowment
California HealthCare Foundation
Calvert County Health Department
The California Wellness Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Case Foundation
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Marguerite Casey Foundation
Citizens' Budget Commission
Citizens' Health Care Working Group
City of Boston, MA
City of New Orleans, LA
City of Port Phillip, Australia
City of San Francisco, CA
Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York
The Cleveland Foundation
The William J. Clinton Foundation
Colorado College
Council on Foundations
Donna Karan
DC Youth Advisory Council
Enterprise Foundation
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Ford Foundation
Fund for Our Economic Future
The George Gund Foundation
Grantmakers for Children, Youth & Families
Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania
The Greater Cincinnati Foundation
The Greater New Orleans Foundation
Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission
The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
IBM Center for the Business of Government
ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
King Baudouin Foundation
Jewish community Federation of Cleveland
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The Lancaster Chamber of Commerce
Lancaster County Community Foundation
The Lee Institute
Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation
Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation
The David and Minnie Meyerson Foundation
Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, Western Australia
National 4-H Council
National Academy of Public Administration
National Capital Revitalization Corporation
National Conference on Citizenship
National League of Cities
National Performing Arts Convention
Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission
(now Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning)
Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission
The Pew Charitable Trust
Public Life Foundation
Rebuilding Lives Coalition
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
The Rockefeller Foundation
Seaport Speaks
Shaping America’s Youth
State of Maine
The State of the USA, Inc.
Surdna Foundation
United Agenda for Children
The United Way of Lancaster County
Washington Board of Trade
Washington, D.C.
The George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute
World Economic Forum

ALSO:
Your organization markets all of the services below.
Are all of these offerings no fee based services?

Services
people working together around a computer
Our team is dedicated to focused, impactful public conversations.

With over ten years of leadership and a record of award-winning citizen engagement activities, AmericaSpeaks has proven expertise in public deliberation.

Even in the most complex policy conversations, such as health care reform or disaster recovery planning, our citizen engagement services produce workable, specific guidance from citizens to decision-makers.

AmericaSpeaks acts as a neutral, honest broker so that participants can make up their own minds on a given issue. The services we provide to engage people in decision-making include:
21st Century Town Meeting
AmericaSpeaks’ 21st Century Town Meeting® is a public forum that links technology with small-group, face-to-face dialogue to allow thousands of people to deliberate simultaneously about complex public policy issues and express a shared message to decision-makers.
Strategy & Planning for Organizations
Dialogue, deliberation and interactive agenda setting is an asset to any large-scale conversation. AmericaSpeaks' 21st Century Summit will help your organization increase its meeting effectiveness through methodologies that promote participation and thoughtful decision-making, combined with our state-of-the-art technology. We can also guide you through a strategic planning process to shape what your organization is, what it does, and why it does it.
Engagement Tools
Finding the right tool for the job is the key to success. AmericaSpeaks' engagement tools will provide focused feedback from your stakeholders through online deliberation, webcast meetings, leadership or stakeholder dialogues, community conversations, research or keypad polling. In partnership with engagement tools, AmericaSpeaks brings a number of citizen engagement services to the table.
Speakers Bureau
The staff in our speakers bureau offer dynamic presentations on topics that include democratic reform and revitalization, citizen engagement in complex policy issues, and increasing constituent participation in the private and nonprofit sectors. Whether in a room of ten or ten thousand, our speakers will energize and mobilize your constituents.

Engagement Tools
AmericaSpeaks’ Engagement Tools are used to build a level playing field on which citizens can be authentically engaged with each other in policy discussions that are directly and transparently linked to decision-makers and governance processes.

In partnership with the tools listed below, AmericaSpeaks also offers number of citizen engagement services to create a comprehensive and engaging program.
21st Century Town Meeting
AmericaSpeaks’ 21st Century Town Meeting® is a public forum that links technology with small-group, face-to-face dialogue to allow thousands of people to deliberate simultaneously about complex public policy issues and express a shared message to decision-makers.
Online Deliberation
Leverage the ever-expanding potential of online discussion and consultation with the public. AmericaSpeaks provides strategic advice, project design and management expertise in online consultation. From the comfort of their own home, citizens would be able to offer their ideas as well as discuss with other citizens about your issue.
Webcast Meetings
Live video broadcasts via the web, or webcasts, can connect multiple meeting sites, can connect a central meeting with individual users, or a combination of both approaches. Participants of a webcast meeting can watch the live proceedings, dialogue in-person or online, give input to the discussion or take action on the issue.
Community Conversations

Hundreds or thousands of people can participate in Community Conversations held in homes, schools, places of work and community centers across your target area. AmericaSpeaks works with you to develop easy-to use materials that help participants coordinate events, host focused discussions and report the outcomes back to you. Citizen-led Community Conversations can contribute to your project's goals and increase community participation.
Leadership and Stakeholder Dialogues

Bring together key players to dialogue and deliberate about core issues and build support for your project. AmericaSpeaks will help you engage elected officials, business and non-profit leaders to uncover new possibilities for action and lay a foundation for implementation. We will also work with you to identify the people and organizations whose interests are affected by your project, and engage them in focused and productive converations.
Keypad Polling
Capture and share participant feedback at your meeting in real time with handheld wireless keypads. AmericaSpeaks provides expertise in question design to ensure usefulness of polling results, experienced keypad operators and reliable equipment.
Research
Our Democracy Lab for Research and Innovation has dedicated resources to monitor the development of citizen engagement and deliberative democracy, evaluate the impacts of these efforts, and determine how to sustain citizen engagement beyond particular projects. AmericaSpeaks' research team can also provide guidance on how to institutionalize public engagement into policy-making.

Well, I know commercial enterprise dominates the voice heard in Washington in all that happens in America. And I also realize that the spirit of the open government initiatives and this site are intended for all to provide feedback and ideas. I was hoping to hear from some plain wrapper American's, much like myself.

michael 9 months ago

I think the whole point of open government and eGov is that control comes from the bottom up. People keep trying to apply the new technology to the traditional top-down model of command and control, but network technology turns this model upside down. Ultimately, we don't need federal bureaucratic agencies except to execute the public will. Bureaucrats whose power is based on their budget and regulatory reach will never willingly fall on their swords and surrender that power for voters' eGov.
See the discussion on New Governance Paradigm.

Stephen Buckley 9 months ago

Dear fellow "Idea" brainstormers and commentors:

For news and moderated discussion (public, but unofficial) about the
continuing development and implementation of the "Open Government
Directive", you are invited to either:

1. send mailto:opengovernmentdirective+subscribe@googlegroups.com

2. visit http://groups.google.com/group/opengovernmentdirective

NOTE: Because I am posting this to the Comment section of some
(but not all) Ideas, you may see this message more than once.
I apologize for that.

vr,
Stephen Buckley
http://www.UStransparency.com

owen 9 months ago

It would be good for agencies to post their plans for open government in a standard, open format like AIIM's emerging StratML standard, whose prospective purposes are outlined at http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm

absiebert 9 months ago

Of course plans are a good idea, but my experience with openness initatives has been that while policy is important impolementation is crucial. (read Pressman and Wildavsky).

Getting openness to work is very hard even when there is strong pollitical support. Entrenched interests resist vigorously. But on the happy side nothing is more wonderful than a negative bureaucrat who wakes up and smells the roses and actually likes it .

Each agency needs a champion or champions who know the agencies very well, who can work up and down and across their agency and with other agencies and (heavy emphasis) the citizens, and who believe in their hearts that without tranparency and openness democracy is mortally wounded.

Then too there needs to be some way to call in the resources of the white house (financial, and muscle) if implementation problems are encountered. In past adminstrations I have not been impressed with the agency deputies types of meetings I went to and therefore do not think a panel of agency deputies would work. Too political; rather, perhaps a John Podesta WH type who did so well helping openness during the Clinton efforts.

bradley.will 9 months ago

All agencies should improve their websites, similar to how the White House website has been brought into 2009 with intuitive navigation and quality content only a few clicks away, using open web standards.

Also, each level of government (federal, state, county, city) should have a centralized website for all online services, with short click-paths for public resources and a focus on usability/accessibility. A standardized format such as a top-navigation bar for higher-level governments would also be preferable, so that it's easy to go from a city's site to the site of the county the city is in, and so on.

As examples, servicearizona.com and myazcar.com are two great resources for the AZ DOT, but really should be consolidated into maricopa.gov / phoenix.gov / az.gov / azdot.gov / you get my drift. Nobody cares which agency is at which address or is under which branch/level/wing of government-- they just know they live in Gilbert Arizona and want to register a car/start a business/request court records/find a nearby pediatric hospital/get a map of local schools. So they go to gilbert.az.gov and are routed within four clicks to the appropriate page for that information, whether they end up at the city, county, or state level sites.

mwdabose 9 months ago

I like the idea, but I have witnessed many similar campaigns in the past ultimately fail. Unfortunately there needs to be follow up and follow through.
Unchecked, this costly effort will result in hand waving, talk, meetings all over the place . . . and that is all. It will die a slow death in some neglected corner.
Now if we could change government's mind set, such that your idea became a way of life . . . that would be great.
Unfortunately government is ruled by vested self interest. Inside the beltway in Washington DC, very little, if anything, is based on reality or need - my personal 20+ years of experience + opinion. My guess is the same could be said for state and local government across the nation. "We the people" is simply a catch phrase with no real meaning anymore. I am not sure how to peacefully get back our republic. The culture change would be large indeed.

owen 9 months ago

While attitude change may be required, it is not sufficient in and of itself. Goals and objectives must be documented in terms against which progress (or lack thereof) can be measured and reported to stakeholders. Enabling that to occur is the essence of AIIM's emerging StratML standard. http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm

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