Open Government
Dashboard
Version 1.0
Version 1.0 of the Open Government Dashboard, unveiled last week in a White House blog posting, allows the public to monitor the progress of government agencies against deliverables and milestones outlined in the Open Government Directive.
The Open Government Directive, issued on January 22, 2009, mandates that executive departments and agencies must take action to increase government transparency and accountability, facilitate citizen participation in policy development, and improve collaboration across agencies and with the private sector. To achieve these objectives, agencies must (1) publish government information online, (2) improve the quality of government information, (3) create and institutionalize a culture of open government, and (4) create an enabling policy framework for open government.
While agencies work to meet interim deadlines, the public can access a central data repository via data.gov, which catalogs raw data sets and data mining tools. In the next year, agencies will add additional high-value data sets, enhance their webpages, and create robust plans for accomplishing open government mandates. Citizens can expect that future versions of the Open Government Dashboard will include more holistic metrics to evaluate agencies' progress.