An open and transparent government is a dream for many, and the Sunlight Foundation’s mission is to encourage that, but lately, they are having some disappointments regarding transparency from the new administration, as this recent post from their blog indicates.
An excerpt.
“Sigh. I feel like a disappointed parent.
“When the details of the Open Government Directive were announced early last December I was unbelievably excited. Seriously. My long time hope that one day government would get “it” about the importance of putting public information online appeared to have arrived. Government data was going to become available as a default and that was going to start with an “inventory” (government’s word) of the “high value information” (also their words, though less than ideal because who would ever agree what that means?).
“Agencies were supposed to do two things with respect to releasing data: create an inventory of the “high-value information” currently available for download and identify high value information not yet available along with establishing a reasonable timeline for publication of that data online. It was that latter requirement that I salivated over. Certainly there are other important aspects of Open Government — participation and collaboration are values we hold dear at the Sunlight Foundation.
“But yesterday was the day when the rubber was supposed to hit the road on data. For many agencies, they didn’t even get out of the garage.”
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.