Is Obama's Open Government Initiative Technologically Feasible?

Obama's open government directive will include a schedule for data distribution in formats that are machine-readable, says the Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

But some e-government interest groups say that's unrealistic because most agency data exists in PDF format, which is not machine-readable and from which data cannot be easily extracted.

That makes the transfer of legacy data difficult, but one e-government advocate says newly created data could be stored in a new PDF/A version that is more suitable for long-term preservation.

For more information, click here.

Open Government Directive Coming Soon...

Just another few weeks, says the government's first CTO, Aneesh Chopra, regarding a new open government directive.

The first step of the directive will be a mandate for federal agencies to enact structural changes so that open government principles become part of their "institutional fabric," reports internetnews.com.

Additionally, the directive will ask agencies t bring more data online and in a machine-readable format, as opposed to PDFs.

Get the full report here.

Public invited to participate in drafting Open Government Directive

OMB Watch reported last week that the Office of Science and Technology Policy was preparing to invite the public to make recommendations for the Open Government Directive that President Obama assigned on his first day in office to the Chief Technology Officer. The public engagement process will have three phases, according to the Open Government Blog on the White House Web site. An initial brainstorming online session will allow the public to vote on suggested ideas or add their own. On June 3, the best ideas "will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase." On June 15, phase three will use a public wiki to "draft recommendations in collaborative fashion."

On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, the President issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government and called for recommendations for making the Federal government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

As Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President says in the video below, we are proud "to announce an important next step in this historic call to action – one that will help us achieve a new foundation for our government – a foundation built on the values of transparency, accountability and responsibility."

Read the initial OMB Watch blog here.
Access the White House Open Government blog here.
Participate in the brainstorming session here.