Last Tuesday, the Obama Administration issued an Open Government Directive (link to PDF) instructing federal agencies to immediately make their operations more transparent to the public. The administration also released a progress report (link to PDF) on the steps already taken to increase transparency this year.
These actions come after eight years of the most opaque administration in American history. They also come in the wake of recommendations (link to PDF) collaboratively developed by the right-to-know community during a two-year process coordinated by OMB Watch.
The National Coalition for History welcomes these developments. More on why this coalition of professional historians and history organizations does so is below the fold.
The new directive emphasizes three principles President Obama outlined in a memo issued earlier this year: Government should be transparent, government should be participatory, and government should be collaborative. It does so in four ways.
1. Publishing Government Information Online. Federal agencies are instructed to proactively make information available online, rather than waiting for specific requests to release it. Each agency is instructed to establish an Open Government webpage within 60 days that will allow the public to easily access information from -- and communicate with --that agency on an ongoing basis.
2. Improving the Quality of Government Information. Agencies must now designate within 45 days a "high-level senior official" to be accountable for the quality of federal spending data for the agency. Within 120 days, OMB will issue guidance related to fiscal transparency, including a "longer-term comprehensive strategy" that addresses reporting methods and data quality. This guideline is intended to allow the public a better sense of how the federal government spends money.
3. Creating and Institutionalizing a Culture of Open Government. The directives under this point include the following: Each agency must produce a detailed Open Government Plan within 120 days that will be used to measure progress. The Federal Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer will create an Open Government Dashboard on the White House website within 60 days that will provide access to the agency plans and track key metrics of openness for each agency. The agencies will establish a joint working group on open government issues within 45 days for sharing best practices on transparency issues.
4. Creating an Enabling Policy Framework for Open Government. Going under the assumption that current policies governing information management are largely antiquated and in need of updating, the White House directs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to review existing policies "such as Paperwork Reduction Act guidance and privacy guidance" to identify problems and issue revisions to allow openness to move forward.
Nonpartisan history institutions see this directive as welcome news. The National Coalition for History, which includes the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and most of the other professional history associations working in the United States, announced the directive as "sweeping," representing a major break with the policies of the previous administration. Nonpartisan history associations have decried the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration in reclassifying documents, reducing funding for archives, and otherwise making access to government information more opaque than ever before. These steps by the current administration come after a long period of collaborative recommendations.
Does the directive mean all government information will be posted to the web immediately? No. It emphasizes that regarding access to information, "the presumption shall be in favor of openness (to the extent permitted by law and subject to valid privacy, confidentiality, security, or other restrictions)." Should we continue to file Freedom of Information Act requests and otherwise fight to uncover information on subjects ranging from national security to environmental protection to budget issues? Of course. What these steps do, however, is allow citizens greater access to the information our employees (the federal government) have. Combined with a depoliticized policy toward maintaining the national archives after eight years of budget cuts and reclassification, this news is most welcome to the ears of this historian, and to the nonpartisan history organizations working to increase access to the activities of government.