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An underlying goal of the Open Government Initiative is to change the culture of information dissemination, institutionalizing a preference for making Federal data more widely available in more accessible formats. As one of the flagships of the Open Government Initiative, Data.gov is designed to facilitate access to Federal datasets that increase public understanding of Federal agencies and their operations, advance the missions of Federal agencies, create economic opportunity, and increase transparency, accountability, and responsiveness across the Federal Government – i.e., “high value” datasets. The Open Government Directive specifically required agencies to register at least three new high-value datasets on Data.gov by January 22. While many of the datasets submitted to Data.gov both before and after the January 22 deadline are high-value, agencies have reported those datasets denoted by asterisks in the tables below as new “high value” datasets in accordance with Open Government Directive provisions.

Source: Data.Gov

Linda Fantin and Ellen Miller, with moderator Chris Csikszentmihalyi

In December, the Obama administration directed (Open Government Directive) federal agencies and departments to implement “principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration,” including deadlines for providing government information online. At the same time, citizens and journalists are developing new technologies to manage and analyze the exponential increase in data about our civic lives available from governmental and other sources.

Our speakers Linda Fantin, director of public insight journalism at Minnesota Public Radio and Ellen Miller, executive director of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, will explore this and related questions. Chris Csikszentmihalyi, director of MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, moderates the discussion.

Source: MIT Tech TV

Transparency and Open Government

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

Source: White House

Earth Day from the White House

niccolo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:32:41 +0000

It’s been a busy Earth Day here at the White House and around the Administration.

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Yesterday Vice President Biden kicked off the Administration’s Earth Day Celebration by announcing $452 million in Recovery Act funding to support a “Retrofit Ramp-Up.” This program will create thousands of jobs and allow these communities to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses while testing out innovative strategies that can be adopted all over the country. President Obama also issued a Presidential Proclamation on Earth Day calling on Americans to join in the spirit of the first Earth Day forty years ago to take action in their communities to make our planet cleaner and healthier.

Source: Whitehouse Blog

Obama’s State of Union 2010

niccolo — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:55:46 +0000

Source: Metavid

Obama, Oh Canada

niccolo — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:32:04 +0000

Tzeporah Berman: Canada far behind even the US when it comes to renewable energy

Berman: States and provinces are way in front of federal governments in environmental legislation

Source: The Real News

Canada desperately needs a new and positive vision in the fight against global warming.

Many countries are working hard at solutions and building new economies along the way

Source: Power Up Canada

The unemployed should besiege the Obama administration

niccolo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:26:03 +0000

Paul Jay speaks with academic Tom Ferguson about solutions for rising unemployment levels and melting stimulus.

Thomas Ferguson is a political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a Political Science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also a a contributing editor of The Nation. He is also the author of several books, the recent of which is Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political System

Source: The Real News

Why no change from Obama ? Why no climate deal ?

niccolo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:00:36 +0000

So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the polluters.

He will only achieve significant progressive change if he reforms the political system itself – to make it accountable to the American people, not the corporations. He needs to change the rules of the game. Ban big business from making political donations, and replace it with state funding. Shut down the lobbying industry. Make a big populist speech announcing you are driving the money-lenders out of the temple of democracy: it’d be surprisingly popular in a country where people can see they’re being ripped off every day. The alternative is to become rapidly complicit in a system where defending rape and slavery is seen as just another day’s work in Washington DC.

Source: The Independent, UK

Earthouse Leadership and Breakthrough Communities

niccolo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:21:08 +0000

Carl Anthony is currently a Ford Foundation Senior Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to that he was the Acting Director of the Community and Resource Development Unit at the Ford Foundation, where he also directed the Foundation’s Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative and the Regional Equity Demonstration Initiative. He was Co-Chair of the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development (BAASD) a multi stake holder collaborative bringing together business leadership, environmental groups, social advocacy groups, labor, faith based organizations, elected and other public officials. Anthony also served as President of Earth Island Institute. He has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, the University of California Colleges of Environmental Design and Natural Resources. In 1996, he was appointed Fellow at the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Source: The Real News

President Obama on Clean Energy at MIT

niccolo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:19:04 +0000

The President challenges America to lead the global economy in clean energy in order to create new jobs at home, free us from dependence on foreign oil, and make us more secure. October 23, 2009
(public domain)

Source: Whitehouse