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The term "open government" can sound like an oxymoron. After all, conducting covert operations and hamstringing citizens with dizzying amounts of red tape are some of the things governments do best.

But as technology makes the information of the world ever more accessible, citizens are demanding more transparency from the governments that are supposed to represent them. And that includes access to data.

In response, the Obama administration today is publishing its Open Government National Action Plan, a detailed set of commitments that aim to make government data easier to find and the government itself more responsive to public input. The plan is part of a commitment President Obama made to open government when he and seven other heads of state founded the so-called Open Government Partnership in 2011. Since then, the international alliance has grown to nearly 70 nations around the world.

Last year, in a meeting of its members, President Obama explained the US's commitment to the partnership. "In a new millennium that allows us to be able to connect with a Tweet or a text, citizens rightly demand more responsiveness, more openness, more transparency, and more accountability from their government," he said at the time.

'We’re trying to engage more Americans in knowing this is a resource for them, for everybody.' Megan Smith

The US has published two other action plans in the past, but this most recent plan includes the most diverse and extensive set of recommendations yet, cutting across government agencies from the Department of Education to the Department of Justice to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"We’re seeing the community of open government grow," says Megan Smith, the US chief technology officer.

Some of the 40 commitments in the report are simple fixes, like making it easier for citizens to digitally access their own information from the federal government without having to submit paper forms. Others reflect a significant shift for the US, like a plan to modernize the Freedom of Information Act request process, which is notoriously slow and secretive. According to the report, the Department of Justice is running a pilot that would proactively publish any records that have previously been released through FOIA requests. Meanwhile, the National Archives will begin developing tools to teach more students about how to use FOIA.

"We’re trying to engage more Americans in knowing this is a resource for them, for everybody," Smith says.

The 20-page report also includes plans to release government spending data, local policing data, climate data, intelligence data, and more. Of course, it's not as simple as just releasing the data, Smith says. It's also critical to make sure that the data is easy for the public to navigate and simple for members of the civic tech community to integrate into new products. The US Digital Service recently released a set of web design standards for government websites; implementing those standards is yet another one of the plan's commitments.

Of course, these are not the first promises the U.S. government has made in its pursuit of openness, but the road to transparency hasn't always been smooth. The White House's petition site We The People was one of its first forays into open government, but it backfired early when not-so-concerned citizens flooded the site with joke petitions about deporting Justin Bieber and building the Death Star. The White House was also criticized for its slow response time to serious petitions, which the Obama administration recently vowed to fix.

Even as President Obama has publicly praised the potential of open government, he's also been widely criticized for his administration's secrecy. Journalists and photographers have complained about losing access to the president, while others cite the administration's harsh treatment of whistleblowers as evidence that the administration isn't quite as open as it claims to be.

These cultural issues within the White House may take much longer to change, if they ever do. In the meantime, however, technology can accomplish much to amplify the voices of ordinary citizens in government. Smith says, "It’s all in the spirit of government by the people, for the people."