DOD Releases Open Government Plan
April 07, 2010

The Department of Defense released its Open Government Plan today. It is available on the Web at http://www.defense.gov/open.

The Open Government Plan outlines DoD’s efforts to make operations and data more transparent, and expand opportunities for citizen participation, collaboration, and oversight. It is the latest major milestone for DoD in its focus on openness and transparency, as envisioned by the President through last December’s Office of Management and Budget’s Open Government Directive.

Together with public input, the Open Government Plan includes material from across DoD, drawing on the expertise of management, public affairs, technology, security and legal professionals, among others. The truly collaborative nature of the process is symbolic of its goals: an agency that is more efficient and collaborative at accomplishing its key mission and is more transparent and open to taxpayers.

“Embracing Open Government at the Department of Defense will generate new ideas benefiting both the warfighter and U.S. citizens. The department looks forward to strengthening the pillars of Open Government in the months and years to come,” said Assistant Deputy Chief Management Officer Elizabeth A. McGrath, the head of DoD’s open government project.

In the past four months, DoD has created an open government Web page, added high-value data sets to http://www.data.gov and has begun to create a governance structure for a long-term commitment to these goals.

In February and March, the public was invited to submit their ideas for the plan on our Open Government Web site. Citizens suggested 92 ideas, cast more than 600 votes and wrote 111 comments. DoD officials reviewed all of the suggestions and comments in drafting the Open Government Plan document, and specifically committed to acting on several of the most popular ideas. To continue this dialog, the plan is being released today. It will be posted online and allows the public to comment on individual sections.