Executive Branch Accountability and Openness
Transparency is a tool to hold policy makers accountable. Our agenda to promote accountability and openness in the executive branch includes working to strengthen openness policies, improving fiscal transparency, and restoring and strengthening whistleblower protections.
Openness Policies
The day after his inauguration, President Obama issued a Memorandum on Transparency
and Open Government calling on his administration to develop recommendations that would "establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." The recommendations would represent an "Open Government Directive (OGD)."
The Administration began the process by gathering inter-agency comments on the OGD using the MAX OMB Wiki, and later publicly released those comments after all identifying information about the commenter was stripped out. From the end of May - the beginning of July 2009, the Obama Administration launched a three phase online process to collect public input on an Open Goverbnment Directive (OGD); data from all three phases was later made available for download.
The OGD process was an innovative experiment in soliciting public participation in the policymaking process: this first use has produced mixed results. A number of non-profit organizations, including OpenTheGovernment.org, have gathered information evaluating the process with the goal of helping the Administration hone the "tools and rules" it uses to engage the public online.
Once the OGD is released, we will work with our partners to evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of the new policies, and continue to push for improvements in openness policies.
Fiscal Transparency
The government's massive intervention in the economy in the wake of the financial crisis highlights the need for fiscal transparency. In addition to supporting efforts to put government spending online, we are working on the following initiatives:
Restore and Protect Whistleblower Rights
Whistleblowers have been and continue to be extremely useful in revealing illegal or inappropriate government actions. Whistleblowers are modern day heroes of accountability, safeguarding government against corruption and mismanagement, alerting citizens of unseen threats lurking where we least expect it. Unfortunately, many government policies and court decisions have significantly reduced the protections Congress established under the Whistleblower Protection Act.