White House Promises Open Government 2.0

The White House plans to launch an updated version of its National Action Plan for Open Government as the initial version approaches its two-year anniversary, according to a Wednesday blog post.

The first action plan, published in September 2011, outlined U.S. commitments under the international Open Government Partnership, a voluntary coalition of nations committed to improving transparency. The White House effectively declared victory on 24 of those 26 commitments in April 2013, but pledged to continue work on upgrades and improvements.

First round commitments included professionalizing the cadre of federal employees that manages Freedom of Information Act requests, pushing for whistleblower protections in Congress and several digital transparency initiatives, among them launching numerous upgrades to the government information trove Data.gov. Administration officials withdrew a commitment to build a database of experts in various fields, saying it wasn’t cost effective and that versions of such databases were already being built at the agency level.

The White House plans to collect feedback as it composes the updated action plan, both through forums with federal agencies, experts and advocates and from the broader public through Twitter, Quora, Google+ and other social media sites, officials said.