OGOV Compliance Site Launches

Over the weekend, the White House quietly launched a new Web site aimed at tracking agency compliance with an open government directive released in December.

The directive set a series of rapidly approaching due dates for actions that are intended to make the government more transparent, cooperative with industry and engaging for the public.

The site, the Open Government Dashboard, was a directive requirement due Feb. 6. The release of the governmentwide site coincides with the unveiling of individual agency open government homepages. The dashboard links to each agency's site so users can read more about the activities that departments are up to.

As of today, nearly every agency -- save for the Council on Environmental Quality -- is meeting expectations. Likewise, overall ratings are uniformly high.

That means most agencies, to date, have met their milestones by releasing "high-value" downloadable statistics as defined by the directive, assigning a senior-level official to oversee the quality and objectivity of online federal spending information and going live with a site dedicated to the directive.

"The first version of the Dashboard tracks agency progress on the deliverables set out in the directive," the site reads.

Perhaps the White House, in future iterations of the site, may hold agencies accountable by issuing more lengthy department-specific appraisals. The experiment continues. . .