Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, he issued a memo on transparency directing his top officials to develop plans for an Open Government Directive to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration. The Sunlight Foundation has created this page in order to add a public element to the crafting of this Open Government Directive that is itself transparent, participatory, and collaborative.
We encourage you to submit ideas for what the Directive should address, and to vote for your favorite submissions below.
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Vote733 Votes
APIs and Bulk Data Access
Submitted on 02/17 8:01 p.m. by sunlight (72 comments)Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and bulk data access must be implemented for government datasets.
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Vote499 Votes
Digital deposit of govt information to libraries
Submitted on 02/19 5:39 p.m. by anonymous (3 comments)the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a network of 1250 libraries around the country that have been successfully giving access to and preserving government publications for over 150 years. Digital deposit of govt information continues this successful distributed preservation and access model in the digital age. Digital deposit is recession insurance for continued free and open access to government information! For more, see http://freegovinfo.info/taxonomy/term/3
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Vote480 Votes
Open Government Data Principles
Submitted on 02/17 8:02 p.m. by sunlight (1382 comments)The eight Open Government Data Principles should be implemented, making all government data: complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, and license-free. (see: http://resource.org/8_principles.html)
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Vote439 Votes
Metadata Standards
Submitted on 02/17 8:01 p.m. by sunlight (3274 comments)Government should develop coordinated metadata standards, to allow for interoperability.
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Vote397 Votes
Ethics Information
Submitted on 02/17 8 p.m. by sunlight (3 comments)Information pertaining to ethics should be given high priority for publication, including campaign contributions, earmarks, lobbying records, personal financial disclosure statements, oversight information, and ethics waivers.
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Vote379 Votes
Use tools like Apture to make documents, bills, House/Senate speeches, more accessible from every .g
Submitted on 02/20 5:03 p.m. by anonymous (4 comments)Beyond opening up more APIs to just make the information "available" by building an API, which is like building a library that only some small # of people will visit -- how about bringing those APIs and that information right to users using contextual presentation tools like Apture, so wherever people go on the web, bills, financial disclosures, videos of speeches from Congress, and even the iCal calendar ics data for the public meetings of every major figure of government should be available contextually anywhere they are mentioned on the web. See this example of how this could work, click the iconic links on these pages: http://sandbox.apture.com/linkproxy/iKWeyCf3/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113001903.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020701189.html Disclaimer: I am an Apture Co-founder, but the reason we're building these tools is so you can link to those specific moments of C-SPAN speeches, the specific buried page of a document, or someone's recorded meeting with someone else. I think these tools could offer a totally new level of transparency in government which would be really exciting. Tristan Harris (Disclaimer: Apture Co-Founder)
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Voted343 Votes
Electronic Records Management
Submitted on 02/17 8:03 p.m. by sunlight (3 comments)Standards and effective enforcement must be developed to govern electronic records management throughout the life cycle of government records. See: http://bit.ly/LLA49
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Vote334 Votes
Public Participation Principles
Submitted on 02/20 2:16 p.m. by anonymous (4 comments)When engaging in public participation efforts, government should adhere to the seven Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation as outlined by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2): 1. Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process. 2. Public participation includes the promise that the public's contribution will influence the decision. 3. Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers. 4. Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision. 5. Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate. 6. Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way. 7. Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision. http://iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=4
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Vote333 Votes
Posts Public Comments Submitted to Regulations.Gov Automatically
Submitted on 02/19 4:17 p.m. by anonymous (1 comments)All public comments submitted in an attempt to influence the outcome of Federal rulemaking processes must be made available online immediately upon submission for all to see. This was promised, but not delivered by the prior administration.
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Vote327 Votes
Electronic Reporting Systems
Submitted on 02/17 8 p.m. by sunlight (0 comments)Electronic reporting systems should be devised for all filings, and the information collected should be fed directly into online databases.
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To jump start this project, the Sunlight Foundation has also independently developed recommendations listed individually to the left, and detailed here.