Real results from the Open Government initiative: next steps

Hey, the folks at the White House have just released Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency

This is a really big deal, showing that they're listening and acting, which is really challenging considered that it involves overcoming a lot of organizational inertia.

Here's a little bit from that summary, excerpts, emphasis mine:

1) Transparency Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking?
 

• Adopt
  8 Open Government Data Principles (complete, primary, timely,
  accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary,
  license-free);
• Adopt Carter Center Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information;
• Crowdsourcing
  should be adopted as a principle and best practices around the use of
  crowdsourcing to evaluate data should be established;
• Agencies should explain all policy decisions and the rationales behind them in readable language;

• Replicate Florida's model of an Office of Open Government;
• Establish
  a Transparency Officer/Open Government Officer and interdisciplinary
  team in each agency whose job it is to inventory and proactively make
  data available to the public. Transparency officer must not be an
  information technology expert only but someone knowledgeable about
  legal frameworks, such as Privacy and Information Quality;

• Impose
  penalties on agencies not following FOIA or tolerating excessive
  delays. Look at India’s approach, in which government officials become
  personally liable and must pay fines if they do not act in a timely
  fashion;

4) Data and Metadata: What technological approaches might be used to
improve access to Government data? What Government-wide approaches to
data and metadata should we be undertaking? How can we improve the
usefulness of Data.gov, the Government’s new platform for access to
data?

• Publish
  a directory of who works in government. Agencies state there are legal
  issues and policies in place that prohibit them from posting their
  organization charts. Changing this might help increase transparency;