BREAKING: White House Invites the Public into Open Government – Finally

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is preparing [1] to post a notice in tomorrow's Federal Register asking for ideas from the public on possible recommendations for the Open Government Directive they were tasked by president Obama to produce. 

Obama issued a memo about the Open Government Directive on his first day in office.  The memo gave the Chief Technology Officer 120 day to develop recommendations for the directive.  That would make the official deadline May 20.  The deadline for public comments is June 19.  Whether this extends the May 20 deadline for official recommendations from the CTO or if the administration will separately release a draft of the recommendations tomorrow is unknown.

The notice prompts participants with a small series of general questions such as “How might federal advisory committees, rulemaking, or electronic rulemaking be better used to improve decisionmaking?” or “What are the limitations to transparency?”  Ideas can be either emailed to opengov@ostp.gov [2] or posted on the discussion page the White House plans to launch at www.whitehouse.gov/open [3].

While this is a very positive step, it is disappointing that it took so long for such a simple invitation of public participation.  The notice does not appear to include any draft recommendations or specific issues the government plans to address.  You would think that after 120 days the government would have some draft ideas to test out with the public.  Perhaps such ideas will be listed on the discussion page or released later. 

In fairness, it must be acknowledged that the administration only filled the Chief Technology Officer position a short while ago.  That delay may have pushed back the entire Open Government Directive Process.  The good news is that the directive is moving forward and the public is being involved.

Image by flickr user kofoed [4]used under a creative commons license.