OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm Between Federal Agencies

Today many US department/agencies (especially US foreign affairs, intelligence and military departments/agencies), and thousands of employees working for these agencies, currently share information and collaborate using a US government-hosted and provided inter-agency intranet known by the name "Intelink-U" (the "U" stands for unclassified, as there is another similar version of USG intranet that handles "classified"... more »

The president should create a Dissemination/Transparency Working Group made up of new agency Senior Dissemination/Transparency Officers and task it to establish metrics for outcome (not process) to assess agency transparency and use them to regularly evaluate and report on progress. The group would be headed by the Government Transparency Officer. The working group must fully include outside participants. The Dissemination/Transparency... more »

The current budgeting and funding of agency programs and projects inhibits and even discourages interagency partnering and collaboration. Let's offer incentives and provide options to make it easier for federal agencies to work collaboratively with one another.

Patterned on the CIO Council and the Web Content Managers Council, this new organization would address all aspects of the technology and infrastructure requirements that will be necessary for federal agencies to plan, acquire, develop and implement the platforms and software systems required for the fully articulated Open Government Initiative.

Members would be representatives of their agency's CIO/CTO and Web Infrastructure... more »

We're still addressing problems in the 21st Century with bureaucracies designed in the 1930s. But contemporary issues like Transgenerational Poverty, Environmental Energy, Preventive Wellness, and Early Childcare do not fit neatly into the vertical departmental boxes drawn decades ago. The number of interagency task forces and interdepartmental agreements endeavoring to tackle such issues has mushroomed in recent years,... more »

Commonly, at federal emergency exercises, one finds that some agency representatives have mistaken perceptions of the emergency roles and procedures of other agencies. The national response plan is helpful in that regard, but provides inadequate detail. Potential disconnects should be addressed in the planning process, not during an emergency. There are two ways to address the problem:

1) Allow each federal agency... more »

Inreach, interagency dialog, and outreach have many of the same characteristics. It makes sense to (a) treat these as concentric circles, starting with inreach and working out to the general public or (b) treat these as one. All the principles, ethics, aspirations and implementation tools discussed in this site should be designed for application within the agency as well in agency-agency and agency-public dialogs.... more »

Many Federal entities do not follow Title 44's requirements to distribute their publications via the Federal Depository Library system. This has been an on-going problem transcending which party is in the White House. It is time for the current administration to follow the law and require all Executive Agencies to follow. Other entities, such as the Courts, which are not part of the Executive Department should follow... more »

Many different federal agencies work on common issue areas. DOJ, Labor, HHS, Education, and others,for example, work on similar youth issues. In community, agency #1 may be trying to prevent juvenile delinquency while agency #2 is working on teen pregnancy prevention and agency #3 is working on youth employment (which is often an possible strategy for the work of agency #1 and #2). Each agency will require its own... more »

In the 1990s, the federal government, in a very rough estimate, was found to spend almost $100 million per year to hire technical assistance consultants to assist communities with the implementation of federal programs. These technical assistance consultants are often engaged to help communities develop and implement public-private collaboration frameworks and public participation strategies as well as other, more technical... more »

The amount of money wasted by each and every individual agency running its own email services is outrageous. Most government employees get 50-75MB (yes megabytes) of storage space, compared to the 5-10GB of space the online players give for free. Now this isn't about getting these services for free, but simply letting Google, Microsoft, and who ever else wants to bid on a replacement for ALL government wide email services,... more »

Create a central source code repository for ALL government software development projects to be hosted and collaborated on. Agencies could collaborate on the development of software systems. Developers from outside of the government and contractor circles that simply want to "help their country" could also get in on the action. This could potentially facilitate an "IT-AmeriCorp" of sorts. There are plenty of automated... more »

Cooperation between federal agencies and between federal, state, and local governments will be important to combat Fraud, Waste and Abuse of stimulus funds. Governments should implement an effective business process and proven solutions to capture and analyze the allegations that are received across government agencies and the GAO FraudNet from private citizens, contractors, and government workers. Integration between... more »

The best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration is:

Collaborative behavior is not a stand-alone feature in a culture climate. Collaboration is nested with just a few other activities, including energy-awareness, being healthier and fit. The best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration is by implementing a multi-faceted wellness and fitness initiative that already has... more »

I have often heard, when someone is referring to the US government, that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. We are still even now, emerging from the Cold War era thinking that keeping secrets, even amongst those individuals who are thought to be on the same side, is the best way to operate. This type of thinking should no longer be enabled.

Our world has grown larger due to the advancements... more »