Times Tickin' for Transparency Directive

This week marks the halfway point to a self-imposed deadline for the Obama administration to issue a directive outlining what agencies will need to do to make government more transparent, participatory and collaborative. In a memo issued Jan. 21, the day after he was inaugurated, President Obama instructed the chief technology officer to pull together the directive. Obama said the CTO should work "in coordination with the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the administrator of [the] General Services [Administration]" to write the directive.

A couple of concerns here. Obama has yet to name a CTO, who's in charge of this. And while he named Paul Prouty, formerly the acting regional administrator for GSA's Rocky Mountain region, to be the acting GSA administrator, he's still acting. That may not necessarily be a problem, but Prouty isn't Obama's main man.

Obama said the directive is supposed to be issued 120 days after the memo. That would be May 21. March 22 was Day 60, or the mid-way point. The directive will most likely be completed by May 21, but it looks like it won't have much CTO input if someone isn't named soon. It's possible that Vivek Kundra, Obama's pick for federal chief information officer, may have some say in the directive, absent a CTO.

In the meantime, what do you think should be in the directive? What should agencies do to make government more transparent, participatory and collaborative? And what's technology's role? Leave a comment.