The day after Barak Obama was inaugurated, one of his first acts was to issue a memorandum to government departments and agencies on the subject of transparency and open government.
“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.”
Elsewhere in the memo, The President calls for a participatory and collaborative stance toward their constituencies. To create a sense of urgency, the memo directs the CTO of the Government and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to develop a strategy that instructs agencies on specifically how to create the openness and transparency that The President seeks. These leaders have 120 days to deliver this initiative.
While this seems to be an extremely aggressive deadline, the good news is that the OMB has prepared itself to address these issues with substantial investment in enterprise architecture and strategic planning tools and processes over the previous decade.
The notions of transparency and openness (not to mention privacy) are intertwined with the notion of technology selection and implementation. Today, nothing happens that connects a constituent with an agency without the heavy involvement of a technology and a business process.
The primary framework that has been put in place – the OMB 300 Business Case process mandates that all technology spending be justified with a business case that is generated through an IT strategic planning process that involves creating and enterprise architecture of the agency, it’s technologies and business processes.
This gives the OMB and the CTO a strong lever to drive transparency and openness across agencies and departments. The 2010 – 2011 300 business case template should add a requirement for demonstrating these drivers. This way, information technology spend for the fiscal years ahead can be tied to the most important initiatives as identified by The President.
For an example of how the OMB 300 process has already been tied to transparency, you can check out this 300 template from the OMB: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/omb/organization/exhibit_300/transparency_act.pdf
