thinking

The Challenge: How do we fundamentally change the way business is done in Washington? What information do you need to know about the way the government works in order to feel more knowledgeable, to be empowered to participate, and to hold government accountable? How do we balance openness with the costs of reporting and the need for confidential, trusted spaces?

What We’ve Heard from You: The relationship between the government employee and the public was at the heart of some suggestions during the Discussion, such as the one that proposed that public employees report a "what am I working on" status weekly on a public website. Some of the suggestions, such as "Convert Depository Libraries around the country into Regional Data Centers" focused more on how to bring about data transparency. Some of your ideas were agency-specific, while others applied across agencies. Feel free to create language around either approach.

Drafting Directions: Review the comments from the Discussion blog as well as comments made by government employees and review the submissions in From the Inbox. Incorporating earlier input, you may write your own draft, or combine and edit those of others to create a new one.

Writing policy requires translating good ideas into clear, specific directions for practical implementation. Hence a good recommendation will be no more than 4 sentences and a set of recommendations will be no more than 1 page. A recommendation should address:

- Who is being directed to do something? (e.g. All agencies must)
- What is the institution being directed to do?
- Why is it important that they do so?
- How will success be measured?

Per the terms of use, your drafts are expected to be civil and on-topic. Help maintain the quality of this process by reporting drafts which appear to violate these terms. They will then be republished in their original place, republished as an "off-topic" draft, or archived off-line.

Return to the Topics Overview, or to the OSTP Blog.

As an addendum to the 8 Principles of Open Government (http://resource.org/8_principles.html), the openness of agency operations must be measured and displayed as follows:

1 The manager for each web site in each agency must, within 180 days, add a link(s) on the initial page of the website to page(s) showing:

a metrics on the use of the website--how many visitors, how long they stay, and so forth. Most important is displaying trends over time.

b a page discussing major categories of data available through the website and how closely the agency is adhering to the 8 principles with regard to that category. This would notably include E-FOIA, FOIA, public relations information, etc. etc. etc.

c a page discussing major categories of data which the agency has, but which is not being made available. This might include data which the agency plans to make available but is currently unable to. Other items might include names, addresses, salaries, race, sex of employees,. It should also include things such as Congressional prohibitions on releasing data.

d a moderated discussion page where the public and agency reps can discuss items a, b, and c.

The data in item a will show the public, the agency's top managers, Congress, and OMB whether the site is useful to the public. Items b and c will show how open the agency thinks it is being, Item d will provide the ability for the agency's public to dispute the agency's priorities and decisions, or maybe reveal the public is satisfied with the agency.

Success in implementing this proposal can be roughly measured by counting the websites who achieve it within 180 days.
Open government is about obtaining more cost-effective results for the people. One source of ineffeciency in government is one-sided "debate." Government programs develop constituencies of advocates within government, led by program office personnel. The larger the program, the greater the internal interest in protecting it, and therefore the greater the need to hear opposing points of view.

President Obama brings to government a strong desire to consider opposing points of view. This excellent personal quality must be made part of the fabric of government. The best way to ensure this is to require that all decisions within the Executive Branch above a certain spending threshhold require a designated opponent, whose charge is to rebut the arguments of the proponents of the spending decision.

Just as courts would not function effectively unless all parties were heard, so the Executive Branch desperately needs to listen to naysayers.

This, then ties to openness and transparency because to do their job effectively, the designated opponents must have total access to program information, and the necessary clearances to obtain such information.

While opening government to the public at large serves a beneficial educational purpose, unless transparency is linked to decision making and resource allocation, government will not be made more efficient. Furthermore, the public is likely to express a more narrow, NIMBY-like reaction to government activities.

Because of the large number of important and expensive government programs, a similarly large number of designated opponents would come into existence. The community of designated opponents would soon form an association, which would publish standards and ethics, and in particular would provide an insider's view of how to ferret out hidden information adverse to programs. The designated opponents would demand sufficient resources to carry out their jobs as official critics. So by creating this role within government, and valuing it highly, we can make government more cost-effective for the public.

By contrast, the often-discussed programs to protect whistleblowers are weak, because the process of whistleblowing has not been institutionalized. This proposal remedies that weakness. Designated opponents are in fact institutionalized whistleblowers. There should be no need to protect designated opponents, because their very position within government is self-protected.

The biggest risk to this approach relates to pet programs of political appointees. The President must enforce adherence to the designated opponent system, even when it means information adverse to a particular administration initiative must be made public.
No one likes paying taxes, in part because people do not feel like the government spends funds the way we wish it would. Therefore, to increase IRS accountability and taxpayer buy-in, the IRS should send a proposed use of tax revenues out with its 1040s (or make them available electronically). This proposed use of funds would be based on all governmental agencies' proposed budgets. Taxpayers would then file a designation of how they wish their individual tax payments to be used. The government would set aside a certain percentage of all taxpayers' tax payments (say 50%) to be spend as congress/the president sees fit (so that necessary programs can be covered), with the remainder being spent as all taxpayers (collectively) have directed. In all likelihood, overall budgeting will not be dramatically affected given the breadth of interests taxpayers represent, but all taxpayers will feel there tax dollars are being spent in a more resonsive manner to our desires.
Memorandum of Transparency and Open Government calls for a level of openness in government not seen in the USA before. According to the memo, such an open government needs to be based on transparency, participation, and collaboration.

When democracy arose in Athens in the sixth century BC, all free men participated in gatherings where they freely debated policies that should be pursued by the Athenian government. Today, with technology that makes rapid communication very facile, introducing new tools such as social networking concepts even into government is possible. This facilitates bringing together individuals in an effective, internet-based network groups, seeking to debate and find solutions to important social issues faced by our society. Our governance should be based on such give-and-take discussion among all citizens.

It has been argued that open government is a contradiction in terms you can be open or you can have government. It will indeed be a historic step should the initiative lead to the creation of government of the people, by the people, for the people. So far the initiative looks at best to generate a collection of opinions offered by a small proportion of citizens, opinions to be considered or not by the Executive Departments of the US Government.

Each Citizen must play his/her role!

It will take much more than the current initiative to develop an open-government system that is effective in reaching correct decisions with a very active and comprehensive participation of its citizens.

Provided that the successive elected US Governments will indeed commit to open government principle, an important next steps will involve finding optimal ways

to define problems to be tackled and solved,

to establish an effective mechanism by which discussions are conducted to generate and agree possible solutions, and

ultimately to find ways effectively to implement such solutions to achieve the desired result.

In a democratic system we will need to find ways of implementing our solutions through influencing others both the powers to be and the public opinion in general, through publications, direct communications, explaining, educating, convincing, etc.

How far can open government go in this direction? There are constitutional constraints on how we govern the USA. But this shouldnt stop us from raising challenging questions on important issues. It is unlikely that self-regulating social networks would replace the government in the near future but it should be possible to start creating policies by communities of interest comprised of people who are most heavily affected by them.

Ultimately, how well this is going to turn out will depend on how citizens respond to this challenge. Not only will our system of government need to respond to citizens pressure, but our citizens own attitude to openness, honesty, fairness and tolerance will need to evolve and transform right across the board. We need to alter our culture even more

Whistleblower protection is the lifeblood for any credible government transparency campaign, and therefore we need President Obama to support the policy on which he campaigned - swift passage of a federal whistleblower protection law that provides universal coverage enforced by full court access, including a jury trial.

Congress has recognized that federal employees who report waste, fraud and abuse in government need legal protections if they are retaliated against, which is why it has unanimously passed whistleblower protection legislation three times. However, each time the law not only failed to protect, but ended up creating far more retaliation victims than it helped.

In each instance, the cause was weak due process enforcement through hostile administrative or limited judicial review. Since 1999 Congress has been trying to pass credible rights that eliminate these fatal loopholes. After seven hearings, eight committee approvals, four unanimous House or Senate votes, constant veto threats and consistent frustration due to procedural objections or secret holds, the legislation now has a new lease on life.

Congress is once again seriously considering bipartisan whistleblower protections for federal workers, demonstrated by recent Senate and House hearings on the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009. While there is a consensus for "best practices" reform on most points between the House and the Senate, two critical issues have not been reconciled. Unlike the House bill (HR 1507), the Senate bill (S. 372) - 1) does not provide due process through jury trials in federal court to enforce the free speech rights on paper; and 2) excludes FBI and intelligence agency workers from protection.

The Make It Safe Coalition strongly recommends the House bill. The overwhelming lesson of the last 30 years is that when an individual federal worker challenges government misconduct, there is no chance for justice without full access to court. Similarly, the Coalition believes that the public benefits if the law permits FBI and intelligence whistleblowers to make disclosures within the proper channels, as the House bill provides. Whether the issue is vulnerability to terrorism, human rights abuses such as torture, illegal government surveillance or lying to Congress, it is essential that national security whistleblowers are safe to bear witness.

There is no justification for further delay. In 2007-08 Congress passed best practices whistleblower rights unanimously for corporate workers in five laws, all enforced by jury trials and without a national security exception. It unanimously gave the same rights for all corporate and state and local government whistleblowers in the stimulus law, but it failed to extend those protections to federal employees. It is not too late: Before stimulus spending gets fully underway, Congress must close the accountability loophole for federal whistleblowers trying to keep unprecedented government spending honest.