Public Participation and the Open Government Directive
Last week, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra held a live webcast to announce the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive (pdf).
The directive requires executive departments and agencies to meet 45, 60, and 120-day benchmarks in creating frameworks, plans and flagship initiatives for open government. The directive's bywords are transparency, participation and collaboration.
Here is a survey of the mixed reactions I've seen.
GovFresh gathers a selection of glowing responses, including one from Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org: “This is great. No equivocating, vacillating, hemming, or hawing. This is all good, big thumbs up to the folks that made this happen.”
Intellitics notes that the directive's emphasis is clearly on transparency, rather than participation.
Meredith Fuchs wonders whether there is "more than rhetoric" in the directive, but also notes that "this is the most significant effort of which I am aware to open up our government to the light of day."
Andrea DiMaio flat out calls the directive disappointing.
On the NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation) discussion list, Barnett Pearce notes that vision of openness expressed in the directive falls mostly to the left on the IAP2 (International Association for Public Participation) spectrum. The spectrum (pdf) describes qualities of participation, from informing to involving and empowering.
