OMB Issues Open Government Initiative for all Federal Agencies

By Doug Martinez, Director, Government Markets

The Federal government is leading the way in transforming the way government does business. As many of vendors can bear witness, accessing timely information about government initiatives and actions is often challenging. Strategic Plans are helpful but they do not provide the day to day pulse to enable vendors to offer their full potential. Government has long been culturally prohibited to openly share information about activities. This should be an interesting transition that will spread to the Public Sector community in the near future; a trend worth monitoring to help your business accelerate.

The Office of Management and Budget under the Direction of the President’s Office aims to deliver an Open Government over the next 60 days. The Open Government Directive that the Obama administration released today lays out several deadlines for agencies, all centered on making government data easy to access and use. Within 45 days, agencies must make a minimum of three high-value data sets available to the public, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said today during a Web chat announcing the new directive. The goal of the directive is to change “the default setting of the public sector from that of being secretive, opaque and closed to one that is open, transparent and participatory,” he said.

Contact Doug for more information: Doug.Martinez@necam.com.