Open Government Workshop Brings Promising Ideas
Transparency. Public Participation. Collaboration.
They sound great in principle. As models, they are ideals that are worthy and noble to subscribe to. But goals are different than action steps. What we “want” is different from what we “have.” Now consider that the path to getting “there” is not laid out (or funded) and the scene will be set to explain the second Open Government Directive Workshop series that took place Monday at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
About 175 people from across government, including agencies as diverse as the Interior and State Departments, met in a day designed to mimic the mindset behind the President’s Open Government Directive: an open, transparent and collaborative daylong working session, where best practices were exchanged, relationships formed and new ideas proposed.
One common refrain: “How are we going to do this?” With limited time and resources before each agency must submit their plan for open government to the Office of Management and Budget, and launch a Web site to announce their plans to the public, agencies are struggling to bring together the resources they need to comply with the Directive. While some speakers offered reminders that many of these tools and concepts are not new, it was clear that this change to the bureaucratic mindset was. As an example, in a PowerPoint presentation meant to discuss how his agency was an example of government 2.0 with an online collaborative working library, the first slide was a legal non-disclosure agreement against discussing the information to be presented. If we are truly going to live up to the spirit of open government, then this example showed the challenges that lie ahead.
The federal government is a large and diverse body and different agencies are clearly interpreting the presidential directive in different ways. A representative from the Health and Human Services Department talked about how his agency was implementing the directive within existing resources and procedures, saying that this will likely not be the last open government directive to be issued so it wasn’t prudent to make permanent changes now. On the other hand, the State Department showed real examples of how their global diplomacy initiatives are reaching people around the world, in real time.
Eleven presentations, limited to five minutes each, revealed different initiatives taking place within our government. Despite some having evident shortcomings, there was a palpable excitement. This is something new, something exciting and something that can have a real effect and actually make an impact.
How do we get there? Clearly a first step would be to alleviate concerns among those implementing the presidential directive that each trial need have tangible results. Government is well known for having a risk-adverse mindset — only appropriating funds and resources for programs that have a proven track record, for example. Government 2.0 is different. There is inherently an element of experiment and risk. This has to be embraced, not something to shy away from.
After the morning session, participants turned the workshop into an un-conference, following an open discussion format, in the hopes that the day would turn even more beneficial to attendees in their professional work and could therefore be directly applicable as they meet the demands of the Presidential directive.
The Open Government Directive Workshop Series will continue throughout 2010, roughly once per month. I attended today’s event as a correspondent for Social Government. All of the presentations, as well as archived video clips, of today’s event are available online at www.opengovplaybook.org.
