On January 21, 2009, the White House issued the Transparency and Open Government Memorandum. The memorandum instructed the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to provide guidance to executive departments and agencies on implementing open government. The memorandum outlined the three pillars of open government thereby narrowing the discussion to transparency, participation, and collaboration. On December 8, 2009, OMB released the Open Government Directive (OGD), which provided specific guidance on fulfilling the vision set forth in the January memorandum.
One of the requirements set forth in the OGD was for executive departments and agencies to create a public feedback mechanism to solicit citizen feedback during the development of each department's or agency's Open Government Plan. The majority of the executive departments and agencies opted to meet this requirement through the implementation of an open government public web site built on the IdeaScale platform.
The individual sites, which are now live, provide an important opportunity for citizens to have their voice heard on open government. The public sites have already collected over 800 new ideas and will continue to until at least through March 19, 2010.
At Forum One, we are passionate about the open government initiative currently underway. It therefore comes as no surprise that a number of our staff have made a commitment to contributing their ideas on open government outside of work. A select group of these ideas are provided below. We encourage our readers to review each and vote on the ones that they think can make the biggest impact.
Young Diplomat Program
Department of State
The Department of State should develop a Young Diplomats Program which would provide students with the opportunity to advance their understanding of the core topics and issues relevant to the foreign service. The program would run for the entire academic school year and rely on long-term engagement with students. The program would commence with a registration process which would provide students with access to an online community which would provide age-appropriate resources for the students. The students would prepare for the contest using a series of online practice modules and mobile phone based applications that would test the students on sample questions. Students would complete an online competition that would serve as qualification for a local competition. The competition would progress through in-person competitions to a national competition. Advancing students would be granted a paid summer internship at the Department of State ensuring that the reward is linked to both their educational and professional development.
[Vote for this Idea]
USAID Should do More to Require their Contractors to Share Data
USAID
USAID contractors collect enormous amounts of valuable data as part of research, project implementation, and monitoring and evaluation activities. Too often, the raw data never gets overlooked and the public only gets access to small subsets of the scrubbed data embedded deep into PDF. Many contractors avoid sharing this raw data for competitive reasons. USAID should require contractors that collect data to share with USAID and the public in readable formats that are more easily accessible and usable by third parties.
[Vote for this Idea]
Young Adult International Development Community
USAID
USAID should develop an online social networking community for young adults interested in international development. The community should enable students to engage in conversations related to functional areas and regions of interest. The community would be serviced by select USAID ambassadors, which may include acting foreign service officers, as well as USAID approved educators. On a regular basis, USAID would leverage the community to run contests where students can propose new ideas for complex international development problems, particularly those that engage directly with young adults. Awards would be provided to students as publications of their ideas and USAID leadership recognition. The community ultimately could serve as the main clearinghouse for USAID internships for high school and college students.
[Vote for this Idea]
Standing User Experience & Design Resources for Web Pilots
Department of Defense/USAID
Federal web pilot projects consistently are undermined by usability and design shortcomings because few program managers have access to standing, cost-effective user experience and design resources within their organizations. The net effect of this is that pilot projects launch with poor usability and design issues, which impair their performance and undermines their value. In a Web 2.0 world where usability and design are so important, DoD program managers should have access to standing user experience and design resources within their organizations or have access to them at intragovernmental level. These resources should be equivalent in quality to industry leading commercial organizations and must be available in a cost effective hourly manner. This would enable web pilot projects to have access to the 15-60 hours of user experience and design resources they typically need to realize their potential on the web.
[Vote for this Idea - DoD]
[Vote for this Idea - USAID]
Suicide Prevention Data Set for Active and Reserve Soldiers
Department of Defense
DoD should publish a machine-readable data set on Data.gov outlining suicides and suicide attempts for individuals who were serving as active duty or reserve military personnel at the time of the incident. The data should include non-personally identifiable information related to the individual, their role in the military, descriptive data on the event, whether or not they served in a conflict zone, duration of time in conflict zones, number of deployments, duration from last conflict deployment to incident, previous suicide attempts, and whether the soldier had been diagnosed with depression or a related health factor while serving in the military. If possible, the data set should be expanded to include retired and inactive servicemen and servicewomen.
[Vote for this Idea]
Comprehensive USAID Foreign Assistance Data Set for Data.gov
USAID
USAID should publish a machine readable high value data set on Data.gov depicting all relevant data for USAID directed foreign assistance projects. The USAID directed foreign assistance data set should be broken down by recipient of aid, location aid is rendered, category of aid, rendering agent, and duration of project. It also would be valuable if the data was supported by high-level pre-project initiation KPIs and post-project KPI performance evaluation data. Finally, the data should be easily mapped to State Department data on entity in control of territory aid is rendered throughout the duration of the project.
[Vote for this Idea]
Contact Information Directory for Int. Disaster Response
Department of State
In coordination with its global, regional, and local disaster response partners, the Department of State should maintain a standing directory of point of contact information for governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations by country. In event of a crisis, the Department should publish this directory in a machine readable form. The web site should present the Department's vetted information and make sure this information is clearly identifiable. In addition, the site should enable local stakeholders to upload their own information; enabling the directory to scale to meet the crisis.
[Vote for this Idea]
Interactive Rich Media Learning Tool for Historical Benefit Info
Social Security Administration
SSA should provide an interactive rich media web application that enables American citizens to view what their benefits would have been in real terms based upon their date of retirement. For example, a 25-year-old could see what average benefits would have been for their demographic had they been born in 1925 rather than 1984 and retired in 1970 rather than 2034. The web application would build in changes to average age of retirement and average life expectancy and display what the average annual benefits would have been based upon the criteria the user selects and the personal non-PUI attributes of the individual (ex. income, age, etc.). The tool could have a corresponding curriculum for high school and college educators to use it as a teaching tool in the classroom.
[Vote for this Idea]
DoD Web Site Directory
Department of Defense
DoD should expand its Web Watch to include all official, beta, and pilot external web properties managed by the department. The directory should provide intuitive navigation and enable users to discover sites based upon both text-based and faceted search. Once the directory is completed, it should be expanded to include other departmental digital communication assets, such as public facing mobile web applications and social media accounts.
[Vote for this Idea]
International Disaster Community of Practice
Department of State
The Department of State should partner with other federal government, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations to launch a community of practice for international disaster response. The community would enable peer-peer engagement between those most affected by international disasters, including political leaders, first responders, aid organization representatives, business interests, and civic leaders. The community should evolve into a repository of high-value resources, as well as an open forum for ongoing discussion. The community should regularly highlight participation by those affected by past crises.
[Vote for this Idea]
Address IdeaScale Privacy/Security Concerns
General Services Administration
The implementation of IdeaScale by some government agencies creates a moderate security and privacy concern. For example, when you create an account to make a post, the site uses your email address as the account name. Since the majority of people use one of five or six email providers, it is very easily to expose the person's email account and by extension other information. In addition, moderated sites continue to use the original user name even when a user changes his/her profile with first and last name.
[Vote for this Idea]
Cybersecurity: Consolidated Zero-Day Citizen Reporting Portal
Department of Homeland Security
DHS should partner with commercial companies and government agencies to provide a consolidated portal for citizen reporting zero day vulnerabilities in both proprietary and open source code. Citizen reports should be relayed to both national CERTs and the companies or communities respond for patching the vulnerability. All reports should be logged into a secure central system managed by the government, similar to how NHTSA manages vehicle reports. The government should require any vulnerability reported directly to commercial companies to be logged into this system as well. On a regular basis, the government should produce a report on submitted cases. The portal would be designed to expand to include a social resource center offering: 1)a wiki with information on public vulnerabilities and links to third party software updates; 2) a forum for discussions around cybersecurity between citizens and government personnel.
[Vote for this Idea]
Open Diplomacy Platform
Department of State
The U.S. Government should invest significant resources to advance the concept of open diplomacy. This new construct would rely heavily upon the U.S. government’s existing e-diplomacy and public diplomacy tradition. Open diplomacy would serve as the overall diplomatic strategy for the country -- placing new emphasis on: 1) increasing transparency, promoting openness, and valuing foreign citizen feedback; 2) promoting the use of new and emerging technology to bridge the cultural, political, scientific, and economic gap between the U.S. Government and the global community; 3) leveraging American citizens to increasingly engage foreigners as "ambassadors" of American values and ideas. It would serve to recognizing the long-term strategic importance of confronting the rapid decline of American influence over global ideas and values.
[Vote for this Idea]
Innovative State Department Web 2.0 Solutions
Department of State
The Department of State has a strong record of experimentation with Web 2.0 technologies. Of these various technologies, the ones with the most impact are those that leverage public and private. The department should leverage private and academic partners to innovate new ways to connect with foreign citizens on issues such as culture and science. The Department also should take account of projects that have failed and pool the funding of disparate efforts so that the department can launch two to three big projects a year. Finally, the department should use social media and crowdsourcing technology to solicit public feedback and new ideas from the target audience. This should lead to a new agile procurement and development process which would enable the more rapid development of solutions.
[Vote for this Idea]
Public Social Media Platform for International Disaster Response
Department of State
The Department of State should fund/establish a social platform that enables real-time, two-way feedback between crisis victims and international disaster responders. The platform should integrate with existing social media platforms and be mobile-enabled. The platform should be easily customized for any crisis and rapidly deployed following the on-start of the crisis.
[Vote for this Idea]
DoD Social Media Data Set
Department of Defense
DoD should publish a machine readable data set outlining the department's use of social media in external communications. The data set should include all public social media accounts used in direct or indirect engagement with the U.S. public, who the account is associated with, a breakdown of accounts by platform, categorization of the type of social media platform, number of posts/updates per account over specific time series, and average number of comments/replies for each post/comment.
[Vote for this Idea]
Cultural Community to Build Bridges between U.S. and Foreigners
Department of State
Description: The Department of State should expand on Exchanges Connect and develop an American culture site where our government presents American history and culture through a personal lens. The site would rely heavily on multimedia content and present American culture through the following global navigation elements: 1) Personal stories, 2) Songs, 3) Movies, 4) Images. The site should be supported by rich media and user profiles, enable submission of user-generated stories by individual Americans as well as polished stories on historical figures by government web managers, provide functionality for user content rating, sharing, and commenting, and be fully integrated with third party social media sites. Target audience: The site should provide an opportunity for all Americans to participate in direct cultural exchange with foreigners. It would be designed to support both an American and foreigner community. Objective: The site should enable two-way interaction between "American cultural ambassadors" and foreigners interested in American culture and seek to build cultural bridges between our own citizens and foreigners at a personal level. Technical consideration: The site should be built on a non-proprietary platform rather than Ning to address privacy concerns.
[Vote for this Idea]
Recovery.Gov Donation and Procurement Site for International Disaster Response
Department of State
In collaboration with governmental and nongovernmental, the Department of State should develop an integrated "acquisition and procurement" platform for international disaster response. Modeled on Recovery.Gov, the platform should support the unique needs of the international disaster response community, especially financial and gift-in-kind donations requested by nonprofit disaster response organizations. By doing so, the site will foster rapid collaboration between foundations, corporations, and private donors and the on-the-ground American disaster responders; thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire international disaster response effort.
[Vote for this Idea]
Make the Automated Export System (AES) Mobile Optimized
Department of Homeland Security
The Automated Export System (AES) is the paperless way to file the Shipper’s Export Declaration (SED) and the ocean manifest information directly to CBP. The process requires exporters to first file a Letter of Intent (LOI) that provides basic company profile information and sets forth a commitment to develop, maintain and adhere to CBP and Census performance requirements and operational standards. DHS should optimize AES for all major mobile browsers through the production of a secure mobile application version for LOI filing. The application should support both the filing of the form as well as two-way chat functionality for citizens who require help desk assistance.
[Vote for this Idea]
Border Crossing Delay Notification System for Citizens
Department of Homeland Security
Collaborate with the DOT and state and local agencies to develop a single, real-time border delay notification system. The system should connect with a mobile application that enables citizens to identify the approximate delay times for both personal and business travel at all major border crossings. The system also should send out text messages to subscribers who can pre-register date/time ranges for travel. In event of an ongoing delay (or expected delay) during the registered period, the system would send a mobile text message or a tweet to the citizen notifying them of the delay and, where appropriate, proposing an alternate crossing.
[Vote for this Idea]
Enable Single User Accounts Across All Agencies
All Agencies
The OpenGov Initiative should eliminate redundant account creation across executive branch agencies using IdeaScale. For example, users who create an account on OpenUSAID.IdeaScale.com should be able to log into OpenNasa.IdeaScale.com using the same credentials.
[Vote for this Idea]
International Disaster Response Data Set for Data.gov
Department of State
The State Department -- in collaboration with other relevant executive branch partners (ex. DHS, NGA, DoD, NASA) -- should publish a comprehensive set of normalized, geo-coded data sets for all high-value data and information related to international (and domestic) disaster response. The data repository should be published as a set of data sets on Data.gov. The data sets should contain contextual information to aid in their use by the disaster response community. The entire repository should be seen as a go-to resource for governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental disaster response organizations.
[Vote for this Idea]
Data Framework for Third Party Disaster Response Practitioners
Department of State
The State Department, in collaboration with other relevant executive branch partners, should publish a data standard for disaster response data sets produced by third parties, including academic researchers, state and local governments, foreign governments, corporations, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. The data standard should enable disaster responders to quickly map third party data sets to US government provided data and information.
[Vote for This Idea]
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