Monday, May 17, 2010

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.

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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).

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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


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

Michael S said...

The State of Colorado and many other states have entered into an agreement with the EPA and the NRC to allow state agencies to be the final determinant on uranium/nuclear issues. The State of Colorado and therefore the federal govt. have turned that oversight and enforcement over to the CDPHE (the colorado department of public health and environment). But that agency is partially funded by the private sector and acts as if their role is to refer questions back to the private sector and essentially rubber stamp applications for uranium mining, milling, transportation, economic impact, and storage. No one is doing an EIS or a socio economic analysis or even engaging the stakeholders in a particular instance now being steamrolled in Montrose County in Colorado. The location is in very close proximity to an existing EPA Superfund clean up site where the entire town of Uravan, Colorado that had to be removed in its entirety. How do we get the EPA to engage?

Anonymous said...

Many of EPA's senior managers are still wary of the use of and risks of using "social media" like blogs, etc.

How do you plan to change the mix of incentives and dis-incentives so that those senior managers will become more comfortable with the use of those tools?

Anonymous said...

What outcome -- not just countable output -- measures has EPA decided to use?

Do you know what other Departments/agencies plan to use?

Will OMB establish a set of common measures to enable comparison? If so, how does OMB plan to do this?

BarryE said...

Steve - Thanks again for shining your light on EPA's ongoing efforts in Open Government. As discussed, EPA has been doing things long before OGD became a mandate. In many ways, OGD was a part of the EPA's dna when created decades ago.

BarryE said...

EPA is providing guidance for internal organizations using or planning to use Social Media tools from an organizational standpoint.