OpenGovRadio 6/1/10: The 1990s' Origins of OpenGov

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., June 1st, 2:00 pm ET):


"The 1990s' Origins of Today's Open Government Initiative"


Newsflash:  President Obama did not invent the principles of "open government".  There are new buzzwords, but people have been evangelizing about, and proving the value of, better communication between citizens and their government for many, many years.  Although new to many people, the idea of "Open Government" is the just latest name for the ongoing effort.
   
Your host on OpenGovRadio is Stephen Buckley, and his guest will be Bruce Waltuck, former head of the Government Division of the American Society for Quality.  Bruce Waltuck has spent more than 30 years as a leader in government quality and process improvement. He worked 26 years for the U.S. Department of Labor, where he co-created and managed the DOL's award-winning Employee Involvement and Quality Improvement system.  Bruce is a senior member of the American Society for Quality, where he has served on the Board of the Government Division for over 10 years.  Bruce hosts the Divisions series of webinars on successful government improvement, which draws an international audience. You can learn about the ASQ Government Division at www.asq.org/gov Bruce is also a member of the Plexus Institute, and he holds a unique Masters degree in Complexity, Chaos, and Creativity.  Bruce has written and taught about government improvement throughout the US, Canada, Brazil, and Southeast Asia.

Because Bruce has been at the forefront of government improvement for more than 25 years, we'll be talking with him about the history of work to improve government, and the reasons why each generation of managers and leaders seems to forget what happened "B.T." - before them. Bruce will also talk about ways to re-connect to the body of existing knowledge on government improvement, and the Government Division's current initiative to spread the knowledge and practice of better government around the world.In addition to listening to the show on your computer, you can add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  You can do that in either (or all) of three ways:

A.  Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins.  Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment".  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved).  Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

B.  Email a comment/question Confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can then raise the question "on-air" without identifying you.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However --  The host will NOT answer callers until AFTER all the posted Comments (see link, below) have been addressed.  Callers are welcome to add/ask a "follow-up" to those posted Comments.

Handy Links to "Open Government":

1.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

2.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

3.  OMB's "Initial Assessment of OpenGov Plans" of Federal Agencies

4.  OMB's "OpenGov Dashboard" for tracking Compliance by Federal Agencies

5.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

6.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

7.  Open Government Directive Workshop (#5 in Series) was Monday, May 24th (1:00 to 4:30pm) at U.S. Dept. of Treasury.  (OGD Workshops info here.)

8.  The Amercian Society for Quality's Government Division

=================================

OpenGovRadio 5/25/10: Talking with White House/OSTP's Eugene Huang

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., May 25th, 2:00 pm ET):

"Talking with White House/OSTP's Eugene Huang"

Your host on OpenGovRadio is Stephen Buckley, and his guest will be Eugene Huang, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  We'll be talking with him about the White House's approach for implementing the Open Government Directive, both at OSTP and government-wide.

From August 2009 to April 2010, Mr. Huang served as the Government Operations Director for the National Broadband Task Force at the Federal Communications Commission, and was part of the team responsible for authoring “Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan”.

Mr. Huang served at the United States Department of the Treasury under two Secretaries of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009, as Policy Advisor to the Secretary and previously as a White House Fellow.  From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Huang served the Commonwealth of Virginia under Governor Mark R. Warner as the Secretary of Technology and previously as the Deputy Secretary of Technology. At the time of his appointment as Secretary of Technology in 2004, he was the youngest cabinet member in Virginia history at the age of 28.

In addition to listening to the show on your computer, you can add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  You can do that in either (or all) of three ways:

A.  Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins.  Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment".  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved).  Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

B.  Email a comment/question Confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can then raise the question "on-air" without identifying you.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However --  The host will NOT answer callers until AFTER all the posted Comments (see link, below) have been addressed.  Callers are welcome to add/ask a "follow-up" to those posted Comments.


Handy Links to "Open Government":

1.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

2.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

3.  OMB's "Initial Assessment of OpenGov Plans" of Federal Agencies

4.  OMB's "OpenGov Dashboard" for tracking Compliance by Federal Agencies

5.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

6.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

7.  Open Government Directive Workshop (#5 in Series) was Monday, May 24th (1:00 to 4:30pm) at U.S. Dept. of Treasury.  (OGD Workshops info here.)

8.  OSTP's Open Government Webpage, including the following links:

a.  OSTP's Open Government Plan 1.0 (4/7/10)

b.  "Following Public Evaluation, OSTP Upgrades Open Government Plan" and the resultant Open Government Plan 1.2 (4/26/10)

9.  OpentheGovernment's Evaluation of OpenGov Plans by federal agencies. For the press-release, click here.
=================================
Short URL for this posting:
http://bit.ly/aGJQYQ

OpenGovRadio 5/18/10: Talking with EPA's Lisa Schlosser

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., May 18th, 2:00 pm ET):

"Talking with EPA's Lisa Schlosser"

Your host on OpenGovRadio is Stephen Buckley, and his guest will be Lisa Schlosser, leader of the Open Government team at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  We'll be talking with her, of course, about EPA's OpenGov Plan and their efforts to implement it.

Ms. Schlosser is also Director of the EPA's Office of Environment Information which manages environmental information, runs the governmentwide e-regulation Web site (regulations.gov), and manages EPA's Freedom Of Information Act requests.

============================

NOTICE:  Our scheduled guest, Lisa Schlosser is unable to participate on today's show, but she is being replaced by John Moses, Director of the Communications Strategies Division with EPA's Office of Environmental Information.  Mr. Moses was the "Evaluator" for EPA's Self-Evalutation of its Open Government Plan (see link 9.e, below).

=============================

In addition to listening to the show on your computer, you can add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  You can do that in either (or all) of three ways:

A.  Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins.  Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment".  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved).  Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

B.  Email a comment/question Confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can then raise the question "on-air" without identifying you.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However --  The host will NOT answer callers until AFTER all the posted Comments (see link, below) have been addressed.  Callers are welcome to add/ask a "follow-up" to those posted Comments.
 

Handy Links to "Open Government":

1.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

2.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

3.  OMB's "Initial Assessment of OpenGov Plans" of Federal Agencies

4.  OMB's "OpenGov Dashboard" for tracking Compliance by Federal Agencies

5.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

6.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

7.  Open Government Directive Workshop (#5 in Series) is Monday, May 24th (1:00 to 4:30pm) at U.S. Dept. of Treasury.  (Previous OGD Workshops info here.)

8.  Next Week's Guest:  Eugene Huang, Special Advisor to Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy

9.  EPA's Open Government Webpage, including the following links:

a. EPA's Open Government Plan 1.0 (4/7/10) PDF file: 53 pages

b.  Discussion Forum on EPA's OpenGov Plan

c.  EPA's Open Government Timeline

d.  EPA's Flagship Initiative Projects

e.  EPA's Self Evaluation (4/23/10) of its OpenGov Plan

--------------------------------------
Short URL for this posting:
http://bit.ly/bgpb5a

OpenGovRadio 5/4/10: "GovFresh at One Year: Talking with Luke Fretwell"

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., May 11th, 2:00 pm ET):

"GovFresh at One Year: Talking with Luke Fretwell"

Your host on OpenGovRadio is Stephen Buckley, and his guest will be Luke Fretwell, creator and operator of GovFresh, which "works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy" and features "Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place", including GovFreshTV and MilFresh. Luke grew up, worked and lived in the Washington, DC, area before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to listening to the show on your computer, you can add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  There are three ways for you to do that:

A.  Post it, now, as a "Comment" at the end of this posting (scroll down to "green box").  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not appear).  Commentors do not need to identify themselves.  They may also choose to ...

 B.  Email a comment/question confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can ask the question for you, but if you want to "call in", then he needs your phone number in order to see your incoming call.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However, preference will be given to callers who have already provided their question/comment by posting on this blog.


Handy Links to "Open Government":

1.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

2.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

3.  OMB's "Initial Assessment of OpenGov Plans" of Federal Agencies

4.  OMB's "OpenGov Dashboard" for tracking Compliance by Federal Agencies


5.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

6.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

7.  Notes from Open Government Directive Workshop (#4 in Series) held 4/28/10 at USDA HQ

-----------------------------------------
Short URL for this posting:
http://bit.ly/ddIrpZ

OpenGovRadio 5/4/10: Evaluating the OpenGov Plans of Federal Agencies

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., May 4th, 2:00 pm ET):

"Evaluating the OpenGov Plans of Federal Agencies"

Joining me, your host Stephen Buckley, will be Patrice McDermott of OpentheGovernment, a coalition of organizations that recently released its evaluations of the Open Goverment Plans of federal agencies.  Also joining us is Robbie Schingler of NASA's OpenGov team that developed the OpenGov Plan judged "#1" by OpentheGovernment.

The Open Government Initiative began on President Obama's first full day in office when he signed the Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, followed last December with issuance of the Open Government Directive to federal agencies and, on April 7th, the release of Open Government Plans by every federal agency on how they plan to be more "transparent, participatory, and collaborative."

Last week, the Office of Management & Budget (OMB) released its evaluation of whether the federal agencies met the requirements contained in the OMB's Open Government Directive.  OMB took a "check-list" approach (i.e., did an OpenGov Plan meet an OGD requirement, or not).  OpentheGovernment took a "score-card" approach (i.e., how well was an OGD requirement met).

OpenGovRadio's host Stephen Buckley invites you to listen on your computer and, if you wish, add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  There are three options to participate:

A.  Post it, now, as a "Comment" at the end of this posting (scroll down to "green box").  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not appear).  Commentors do not need to identify themselves.  They may also choose to ...

B.  Email a comment/question confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can ask the question for you, but if you want to "call in", then he needs your phone number in order to see your incoming call.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However, first preference will be given to callers who have already provided their question/comment, AND who haved provided a phone number with which to identify their incoming call.


Links for following the discussion:

1.  OpentheGovernment's Evaluation of OpenGov Plans by federal agencies. For the press-release, click here.

2.  OMB's "Initial Assessment of OpenGov Plans" by federal agencies

3.  OMB's "OpenGov Dashboard" for Tracking Agency Compliance
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/around (then click on an agency's name for its OpenGov Plan)

4.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

5.  "What Government Plans Are Missing" by Andrea Di Maio, The Gartner Group (4/1/10)

6.  How We Will Measure the Success of Open Government at HHS
http://www.hhs.gov/open/plan/opengovernmentplan/change/measure_1.html

7.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)
Excerpt: "When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0410/040710mm.htm

8.  Open Government Directive Workshop (#4 in Series) -- Wednesday, April 28th in D.C. (@USDA)

9.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

10.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

11.  Open Government Directive google-group is an "opt-in/opt-out" moderated email-group (137 members) about OGD news & discussion.

12.  NextGov 4/27/10: Agencies Issue Self-Evaluations for Open Government Plans 
       NextGov 5/3/10:  Group Gives Most Open Government Plans Mediocre Marks

===========================
Short URL for this blog-post:
http://bit.ly/b5bKX6

OpenGovRadio 4/28/10: No Show Today (I'm on travel to D.C.)

Because I will be traveling, and because we had such a good show last week with Beth Noveck (sorry that we could not get to all your calls), I hope you will understand if I skip the regular show this week, and save the energy for next week's show (Tues. at 2 pm ET) when we will be talking about the OMB's evaluations (due out May 1st) of the federal agencies' OpenGov Plans.  By that time, we should also see others' evaluations coming out (e.g., by OpentheGovernment.org).

In the meantime, I am traveling to D.C. to help with running the (free) Open Government Directive Workshop (#4 in the series) on Wednesday morning (9:00-12:15) at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture headquarters.  Last time I checked, there were still some spots left and, if you can not attend in person, check out the online option for "remote participant".

If another related event develops (like a happy-hour for OpenGov-ers), I will post it on my twitter accounts, which you can check at @transpartisan and @OpenGovRadio.

-- Stephen Buckley

OpenGovRadio 4/20/10: Beth Noveck Takes Your OpenGov Questions

Here's what we'll discuss on this weeks's OpenGovRadio show (Tues., April 20th, 2:00 pm ET):

"Beth Noveck Takes Your OpenGov Questions"

Joining me, your host Stephen Buckley, will be Beth Noveck,  the White House's Deputy Chief Technology Officer.  Ms. Noveck's primary responsbility has been President Obama's Open Government Initiative. 

(From Wikipedia:)  Based at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, she is an expert on technology and institutional innovation. Previously, Noveck directed the Institute for Information Law & Policy and the Democracy Design Workshop at New York Law School where she is on-leave as a professor. She is founder of the "Do Tank," and the State of Play Conferences, and launched the first of its kind Peer-to-Patent community patent review project in collaboration with the United States Patent and Trade Office. She has taught in the areas of intellectual property, innovation, and constitutional law, as well as courses on electronic democracy and electronic government. She is the author of the book Wiki Government, about how technology can make government better, democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful.



The Open Government Initiative began on President Obama's first full day in office when he signed the Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, followed last December with issuance of the Open Government Directive to federal agencies and, on April 7th, the release of Open Government Plans by every federal agency on how they plan to be more "transparent, participatory, and collaborative."

After some discussion about Ms. Noveck's perspective on the progress made thus far, we will turn to take your questions and comments, especially from those people in the federal agencies who are responsible for implementing their agency's "OpenGov" Plan. 

OpenGovRadio's host Stephen Buckley invites you to listen on your computer and, if you wish, add to the discussion with your comments and questions.  However, because the listeners' response to this topic may be greater than usual, there are three options to participate:

A.  Post it, now, as a "Comment" at the end of this posting (scroll down to "green box").  It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not appear).  Commentors do not need to identify themselves.  They may also choose to ...

B.  Email a comment/question confidentially to your host Stephen Buckley, who fully understands the risk of raising unwelcome questions within the government.  Mr. Buckley can ask the question for you, but if you want to "call in", then he needs your phone number in order to see your incoming call.

C.  Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question.  However, first preference will be given to callers who have already provided their question/comment, AND who haved provided a phone number with which to identify their incoming call.


Links for following the discussion:

1.  Listing of Federal Agencies' OpenGov Plans
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/around (then click on an agency's name)

2.  GovLoop's Chart of the OpenGov Plans

3.  "What Government Plans Are Missing" by Andrea Di Maio, The Gartner Group (4/1/10)

4.  How We Will Measure the Success of Open Government at HHS
http://www.hhs.gov/open/plan/opengovernmentplan/change/measure_1.html

5.  "OpenTheGovernment.org and [their] partners will be using [the Open Government Directive] to evaluate the Open Government Plans, and grade them on whether they live up to both the letter, and the spirit, of the [OGD] requirements."  https://sites.google.com/site/opengovtplans/

6.  A Test of Leadership by Brian Friel (Government Executive magazine, 3/17/10)
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0310/031710mm.htm

7.  Transparent Leadership by Roger Schwarz (Government Executive magazine, 4/7/10)
Excerpt: "When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0410/040710mm.htm

8. DorobekInsider.com compendium of the previos week's OpenGov links (w/ survey question at bottom)

9.  Participedia.net is a consists of user-generated information about participatory methods and organizations (e.g., NCDD, IAP2, etc.) throughout the world.

10.  ParticipationCamp.org -- April 17th & 18th (Sat./Sun.) in D.C.

11.  Open Government Directive Workshop (#4 in Series) -- Wednesday, April 28th in D.C. (@USDA)

12.  President's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (1/21/09)

13.  White House's Open Government Directive (12/8/09)

14.  CoffeePartyUSA.com is a group that is promoting civil discourse for an "Age of Participation".

15.  Open Government Directive google-group is an "opt-in/opt-out" moderated email-group (137 members) about OGD news & discussion.

====================================
Short URL for this posting:
http://bit.ly/c8t2Jp