Open Government Directive: Guidance for Agencies

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the Open Government Directive (OGD) on December 8, 2009. The OGD required each federal agency to:

• Establish an open government page on their website
• Draft an open government plan and get citizen comments
• Incorporate those comments into their final plan by April 7, 2010

Open government plans are intended to be living documents, so use the resources below to improve your plan and web page.

Open Government Web pages

• Open Government Tool/Share Ideas for Other Agencies
• Terms of Participation
• Accessibility Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Directory of Agency /Open webpages
• Open Government Data and Reports
• Agency Contact Information for Open Government
• Agency /Open webpage Points of Contact

Specific Legal or Policy Requirements

Guidance is provided in OMB Memorandum M-13-13: Open Data Policy—Managing Information as an Asset (PDF, 6 MB, 12 pages, May 2013), in accordance with the May 9, 2013 Executive Order—Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information. 

Resources

Most of the resources below are from government agencies, but some links point to helpful information maintained by stakeholder groups outside government.

• Project Open Data is an OMB and OSTP resource; an online repository of tools, best practices, and schema to help agencies adopt the framework presented in the Open Data Policy OMB Memorandum M-13-13: Open Data Policy—Managing Information as an Asset (PDF, 6 MB, 12 pages, May 2013)
• Open Government Initiative
• Text of the Open Government Directive (December 8, 2009)
• Open Government Portfolio Public Value Assessment Tool—identifies the public value of an agency's open government portfolio. Created by the Center for Technology in Government (at the University of Albany) in partnership with GSA.
• 2009 White House Open Government Progress Report
  (PDF, 3.02 MB, 28 pages, December 2009)
• Agency Initiatives to Support Open Government
• Open Government Playbook—a wiki for sharing best practices
• Email your Open Government questions to the White House
• December Forum call with OMB about Open Government
  • Read minutes from the meeting
    (MS Word doc, 55 KB, 7 pages, December 2009)
  • Read follow-up questions & answers
    (MS Word doc, 51.5 KB, 5 pages, December 2009)
  • Listen to a recording of the call: Implementing OGD at Your Agency 
    (Mediafire file, entire audio: MP3 Format Sound, 51.6 MB, December 2009)
• From Sunlight Foundation
  • Open Government Resources
  • /Open Watcher
• Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government

Other Important Contacts

• Federal Agency Open Government Working Group Senior Level Representatives
• Federal Agency FOIA Contacts
• Federal Agency Records Officers
• OGD Senior Accountable Officials for Federal Spending

Content Lead: Justin Herman
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 20, 2013