Reports

Growing Open Government with the Open Government Partnership: A Graphic

Explore our process using your arrow keys!

Read the full report here.

03/12/2013

Unprecedented Civil Society Report on US OGP: One Small Step for Open Government

The US met most of its 2011 commitments to make the government more open and accountable according to an unprecedented evaluation of the US’ efforts to implement its first National Action Plan. President Obama presented the US’s commitments at the launch of the Open Government Partnership on September 20, 2011.

While the Plan reflected many of the priorities of open government advocates, the specific commitments included in the plan do not put the US on a path to accomplish those goals quickly. According to Patrice McDermott, Executive Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, “The Administration should be commended for taking good first, if often small, steps forward on a number of issues. Achieving the greater goal of transforming government to be open and accountable to the public, though, will require the proverbial giant leap.”

03/11/2013

Progress Report Marks 1 Year Anniversary of Open Government Partnership US National Plan

To mark the anniversary of the release of the Open Government Partnership US National Action Plan, OpenTheGovernment.org and a team of organizations released a progress report on the steps the Administration’s implementation of the report.

09/20/2012

Read the 2012 Secrecy Report Twitter Chat

On September 18th, OpenTheGovernment.org invited contributors to the 2012 Secrecy Report: Sunlight Overshadowed to participate in a twitter chat. Read more to see the report as told on twitter.

09/19/2012

2012 Secrecy Report - Sunlight Overshadowed

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2012— The 2012 Secrecy Report released today by OpenTheGovernment.org — a coalition of more than 80 groups advocating for open and accountable government— reveals that positive changes from the Obama administration’s open government policies nevertheless appear diminished in the shadow of the President’s bold promise of unprecedented transparency. Ultimately, though, the public needs more information to judge the size, shape, and legitimacy of the government’s secrecy.

09/11/2012

Explore the 2012 Secrecy Report

Push the play button to explore last year's trends in secrecy in openness! Use your arrow keys to move from one snapshot to the next. For full details, read the Report.

2011 Trends in Secrecy and Openness on Prezi

09/11/2012

2011 Secrecy Report Released: Administration’s Openness Agenda Shows Some Positive Results, National Security Bureaucracy Hinders Change

This morning OpenTheGovernment.org released the 2011 Secrecy Report (formerly known as the Secrecy Report Card), a quantitative report on indicators of government secrecy. This year's report chronicles positive changes in some indicators of secrecy as a result of the Obama Administration’s openness directives. The indicators tracked by the report also show a national security bureaucracy that continues to expand the size of the secret government.

09/06/2011

Openness Floor

For the last year, OpenTheGovernment.org, some of our partners, and others have been pushing the concept of a government-wide "Openness Floor," a list of types of information each federal component should - at a minimum - release. The items on the list include information that helps people understand what the government is doing and why.

08/15/2011

Agencies Not Meeting Administration's Sunshine Week Commitments

This March we welcomed the Obama Administration's announcement that they planned to take some concrete steps to improve the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In particular we appreciated their guidance to agencies on releasing useful information proactively. Unfortunately, however, it appears many agencies didn't get the memo/blog post; of the twenty-nine agencies who produced substantive open government plans last year, only six are actually making all the specified information available.

07/08/2011

FOIA Dashboard on FOIA.gov Not Meeting Potential

Almost three months after the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched FOIA.gov, the site is still far from delivering on its mission of increasing the public's knowledge about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the process the federal government to process these requests. In fact, thanks to technical glitches and data quality issues, the site currently paints a misleading picture about how well - or not so well - the government is meeting its obligation to answer public requests for information.

06/03/2011

Press Room