What would happen if you could express your opinions directly to federal government agencies—before they make the decisions that affect your life? What if they paid attention?
That’s what the White House is aiming for. Earlier this week, the Obama administration released its Open Government Directive—an initiative to connect federal government agencies more closely with the public they serve. Much of the directive deals with transparency: publishing more data more promptly, creating open-government pages for each agency website, and so forth.
But transparency is only one-third of the equation. The directive also requires the agencies to integrate public participation into their decision making and use multiparty collaboration—with other agencies, nonprofits, even individuals—to pursue their core missions.
According to a White House press release on the website for the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (of which I’m honored to be a member), “The directive stems largely from the unprecedented Open Government Initiative…in which the Administration reached out directly to the American people for specific policy recommendations. Thousands of citizens participated in the online forums and offered ideas on how to transform the government into a more transparent, accountable, participatory operation.â€
Several nuggets in that last sentence. First, this just might work. Clearly the government modeled public participation in creating the whole Open Government Directive, and thousands of citizens responded. Second, online technology facilitates participation on a level unheard of in previous generations. Third, although agencies have long provided opportunity for public comment on pending regulation, this directive aims at institutionalizing the whole notion of open government—spreading it into every aspect of agency culture.
This is still embryonic, of course, and a ton of questions remain. The directive doesn’t mandate specific steps—simply that agencies create plans for open government. Changing bureaucracies, by its very nature, is arduous and takes time. Some dialogue professionals are underwhelmed with this effort, seeing it as focusing too much on transparency and not enough on participation or collaboration.
But the thought that our government might actually want to dialogue with us is a refreshing change from business as usual. Stay tuned.
Commenting on your statement, “Open Government Initiative in which the Administration reached out directly to the American people for specific policy recommendations”…
If the current administration were truly interested in hearing from the American public, it needs to start with its most basic form of open government by allowing CSPAN to enter the negotiating room while the House and Senate merge their versions of the healthcare reform bill.
I sat in astonishment while watching Nancy Pelosi at a press conference on the Hill last week state that, “There has never been a more open process” while touting the transparency of the healthcare reform bill negotiations. In the meantime she has single handedly ousted the American public and other public officials from watching the upcoming negotiating process on CSPAN.
CSPAN, and 20 GOP officials, shot back at Pelosi’s actions by writing an open letter to the administration and Pelosi. To date, the majority nor Obama have responded.
Most pundits agree that President Obama has pressured Pelosi and Reid into passing the healthcare bill before his State of the Union address. By allowing the American public and the opposition into the secret healthcare talks it will only delay, rightfully so, the dreadfully awful healthcare bill and deny an Obama legislative victory.
Adding to this embarrassment, Obama stated on eight separate occasions that the healthcare debate and processes involved should be televised. To date, Obama has not publicly denounced Pelosi’s tactics nor demand the negotiations to be televised.
Adding insult to injury, Pelosi held midnight voting on the healthcare bill a few months ago while withholding the 2000 plus page bill for the public and elected officials to read until 24 hours before the vote. Who can read a 2000 page document in 24 hours and make an informed decision? Anyone? Anyone?
I think that the Open Government Initiative is a ruse designed to bait and switch the American public. For any bill that is passed, popular or not, Democrats will use this initiative as a scapegoat and refer to it as a way to say the American public helped to shape policy. The most recent turn of events, and the tactics used by the majority, smacks of radical left wing elitism. The majority thinks it knows what is best for the American public and will do what they think is right, regardless of its Open Government Initiatives or public opinion. As an example, a recent poll conducted on the healthcare bill shows that the majority of Americans would rather have the current healthcare system than the one proposed. Why then, are our leaders continuing to force the healthcare bill down our throats?
Scott,
Very good points about the lack of transparency in this whole process. I recall being profoundly disappointed when, at the last minute, the bill had suddenly morphed into something barely recognizable even to those of us following the debate. It was obvious that a great deal had taken place on Capitol Hill in a very short time, and I, at least, knew nothing about it.
The tragedy here is that so many good ideas have been floated on both left and right. Obama’s address to Congress on this issue left me very encouraged on just this point: he managed to pull so many of those ideas together. But the subsequent developments–and the President’s strange diffidence to leading the debate–have frustrated me.
From what I’ve seen of the Open Government Initiative, it has sincerely tried to engage the various dialogue communities (like the NCDD) in brainstorming how to make government more transparent and participatory. Whether the administration follows through or not remains to be seen.
I agree on your comment “whether the administration follows through or not on their initiatives remains to be seen”. To add to this discussion, take a look at this story published today. Apparently Vice President Biden had a meeting on open government and transparency… but the meeting was closed.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/01/joe-biden-update.html
Actions speak louder than words and I have little confidence that we will see any improvement. It does not come as a surprise to me that the elitists in the majority continue with this rancorous behavior and thumb their noses at the American public.
Thanks for bringing that development to light, Scott. The irony is obvious, and indeed, it may not bode well for transparency efforts. One question, though, gives me pause: might there be a compelling reason for the closed doors in these meetings? I can easily imagine reasons to keep lunch with the president or a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister private. More interesting to me, it’s possible that some of these meetings are private so that the parties involved can develop their thinking before going public with it; otherwise we get the half-baked thoughts and out-of-context sound bites that often populate media coverage of these events.
Scott, what do you think about the larger issue here? Do you believe that all government meetings should be open? If not, what criteria do you use to draw the line?
I cant help but follow up to this further. Check out this story that was published today. Very interesting. It pretty much epitomizes what I was saying about progress with this administration’s openess. They talk a good game but again actions speak louder than words…
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EFRPJG0&show_article=1
Scott,
That’s an interesting and disheartening article. Curiously, this came up on a listserv recently, but in a somewhat different guise: whether the administration has created a “democracy bubble” by setting overly optimistic expectations for openness. However else one feels about this administration, I’m thinking we can all agree that they’re not great at managing optimistic expectations.
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