U.S. National

ACTION PLAN

INTRODUCTION

Since the ﬁrst day of his Administration, President Barack Obama has made Open Government a high priority. The Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government was the ﬁrst executive action to bear the President’s signature, and the President has pledged his Administration to work toward “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” Over the past two and a half years, Federal agencies have done a great deal to make government more transparent and more accessible, to provide people with information that they can use in their daily lives, to solicit public participation in government decision-ma king, and to collaborate with all sectors of the economy on new and innovative solutions. These Open Governmen t eﬀorts are now entering a new phase, as we collaborate with other countries in the global Open Government Partnership (OGP).

President Obama has emphasized three i ndependent reasons to support Open Governme nt:

• Open Government promotes accountability , which can improve performance. In the words of Supreme Court

Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. ”

• T ransparency enables people to nd information that they “can readily nd and use.” For this reason, the

Presiden t has asked agencies to “harness new technologies” and “solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.”

• In many domains, government should develop policies, rules, and plans with close reference to the

knowledg e, expertise, and perspectives of diverse members of the public. As the President has said, “[k]nowledg e is widely dispersed in society, and public oﬃcials beneﬁt from having access to that dispersed knowledge” and hence to “collective expertise and wisdom.” As it developed a U.S. National Action Plan (“National Plan”), the Federal Government engaged in extensive consultations with external stakeholders, including a broad range of civil society groups and members of the private

sector. It solicited input from the Administration’s own Open Government Working Group, comprised of senior-level representatives from executive branch departments and agencies. White House policymakers also engaged the

public via a series of blog posts, requesting ideas about how to focus Open Government eﬀorts on increasing public integrity, more eﬀectively managing public resources, and i mproving public services. Responsive submissions were posted online.

This National Plan builds on, but does not replace, the Open Government Initiative inaugurated by the President’s

Memorandum on T ransparency and Open Government. The National Plan will brieﬂy highlight what has been accomplished thus far and lay out some of our goals and plans for the future. The process of opening government is a continuing work-in-pro gress. This National Plan is but one step in an initiative that has produced signiﬁcant results over the last two and a half years and that will continue, under the President’s leadership, in many forms in the future. Just as we will continue to generate and implement Open Government policies and reforms, so, too, we will continue to seek input from outside groups and citizens about how to create a more Open Government.