Open Government: White House Revamps Action Plan for Open Government

The first US Open Government National Action Plan was introduced in September 2011.  In December 2013, a second and revised National Action Plan was announced.

The new National Action Plan includes ten initiatives that were designed to increase public integrity:

Improve Public Participation in Government – expands the “We the People” web site that allows citizens to solicit government through signed petitions.

Modernize Management of Government Records – the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will work with federal agencies to improve management of temporary and permanent email records

Modernize the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – the initiative will provide better training for FOIA professionals.  It will also consolidate the process for making FOIA requests so that a request can be made to any federal agency from a single web site

Transform the Security Classification System – review recommendations made by the November 2012 Public Interest Declassification Board to try to reduce over-classification of information.  One goal of this effort is to make CIA and NARA unstructured data searchable.

Implement the Controlled Unclassified Information Program – NARA will develop a program for managing controlled unclassified information

Increase Transparency of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Activities – The white house will release annual public reports that detail activities of national security authorities

Make Privacy Compliance Information More Accessible – Citizens should have better access to publicly-available privacy compliance reports and privacy policies

Support and Improve Implementation of Open Government plans Across Federal Agencies

Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protections for Government Personnel

Increase Transparency of Legal Entities Formed in the US

But after the many recent revelations of the spying activities of the NSA, many are skeptical of the public benefits that are really to be derived from the proposed policies.

John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit advocating government transparency, for example, said that “just creating a new committee to oversee freedom of information requests isn’t necessarily progress, it’s just a new conversation.  It doesn’t mean more FOIA requests will be granted.”

Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, said that “the idea that transparency would be the cornerstone of his presidency is the same as saying if you like your health insurance you can keep it.  A lying president necessarily isn’t a transparent president.”