Obama Tech Agenda

The 2008 Obama presidential campaign laid out a series of exciting ideas for the use of technology in government and proposed the creation of both a Chief Technology Officer and a cybersecurity czar.  This was accompanied by the campaign’s own successful use of technology.  During the Transition, the “Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform” working group had its own video.

The opening months of the new Administration has seen top talent being recruited to help lead these initiatives, including Vivek Kundra as the government’s chief information officer (CIO) and Aneesh Chopra as its chief technology officer (CTO).  Via the fiscal year 2010 budget and a series of speeches and initiatives, they’ve begun to lay out their priorities.  Here’s what I’ve gathered so far.  If there is more, feel free to add in the comment section:

FY 2010 Budget.  According to the NextGov blog, the budget proposes increases in the federal government’s technology investment by 7 percent, to nearly $76 billion.

CTO Chopra.  CTO Chopra laid out his priorities at last week’s Management of Change conference in Virginia Beach.  Here’s Federal News Radio and Federal Computer Week’s snapshots of Chopra four priorities:

• Invest in technology-based innovation to transform the nation’s economy. This includes relooking at the federal research and development agenda and figuring out how to drive innovation through policy.
• Use “innovation platforms” to bring game-changing ways to address the President’s priorities such as health care, climate change, energy, economic improvement and education. These include:  (1) creating a culture of open standards that can be shared and easily replicated so as to accelerate innovation; (2)  re-directing federal R&D investments to be more applied, and more toward the middle ground “south of procurement and north of R&D;” and (3) expand the use of “crowdsourcing” to gather new ideas and fuel innovation.
• Deliver a reliable, resilient and trustworthy infrastructure. Chopra will focus on helping to develop a broadband plan by February 2010 and act on a cybersecurity initiative that will emphasize “game changing research and development, and collaboration with the private sector” to improve critical infrastructure and create bug-free software.
• Create a culture of open and innovative government. Chopra says he will continue to work with federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra, the General Services Administration and others to “build capacity in the federal government for a culture of openness transparency,” to help advance the executive order Obama issued Jan. 21 that “commits the government to greater transparency, citizen participation and collaboration.”

Government Computer News also noted that Chopra “suggested one possibility of working with the General Services Administration to develop an ‘innovation sandbox’ where project ideas could be tested and shared across the government.”

CIO Kundra.  Vivek Kundra, in his maiden speech in March before the FOSE 2009 conference described the Administration’s “four pillars:” transparency via Web 2.0 tools; engaging citizens more effectively in their government; lowering the cost of government operations; and finding and exploiting innovations.

In addition, he has launched several initiatives:

• Data.gov.  Kundra quickly moved to replicate an initiative he sponsored in the DC Government, which he has called “data.gov.”  This entails posting raw government data on the internet and allowing it to be downloaded and used by citizens and businesses.  When it was launched on May 21^st, there were under 100 data sets.  Kundra hopes to have 100,000 up by the end of this week.
• IT Project Dashboards.  Another DC Government innovation was the monitoring of individual IT projects to ensure they were on track.  He says he will replicate that effort across the federal government and release a beta version of the dashboard by the end of June for the 25 largest federal agencies.
• Cloud Computing.  The FY 2010 budget includes an ode to cloud computing (see section 9 of OMB’s Analytical Perspectives), lyrically noting:  “Cloud-computing is a convenient, on-demand model for network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

Currently, the General Services Administration has a “request for information” out to industry to help define the parameters of cloud computing, hopefully in more understandable terms!

Open Government Directive? Not Yet!

The long-anticipated presidential directive on Transparency and Open Government was targeted by President Obama to be announced today – 120 days after he signed a memo directing the development of an Open Government Directive.  I always thought that was a bit ambitious, especially since the officials designated to lead the effort had not yet been appointed.  In fact, the head of that effort, chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra, had his Senate confirmation hearing only a couple days ago, so he’s still not officially in place.

In the build up to the release of the Directive, a number of open government and transparency advocacy groups have complained that the development process has not been open or transparent. 

But it seems today is only the beginning!  A Federal Register Notice was posted today inviting public comment on potential paths the federal government might take.

In addition, Valerie Jarrett, who heads the new Office of Public Engagement, posted a video on the White House website announcing an “important next step” encouraging citizens to contribute their ideas on ways to brainstorm new ideas for “creating a more transparent, participatory, and innovative government.”

Her accompanying blog offers four interesting links:

• A list of “open government listening sessions” the White House has sponsored in recent weeks, along with links to learn more about what occurred in those sessions.
• Links to a series of advocacy group and other recommendations the office has received in recent weeks, regarding potential approaches to act on the president’s goals of creating a transparency, participative, and collaborative government.
• Links to a “gallery” of open government innovations already underway across the government (like a link to the new, cool “data.gov” website promised by OMB’s new CIO, Vivek Kundra).
• A link to a new website designed to collect citizen ideas on potential open government approaches.

This last link, to the Open Government Dialogue, is also the same item noted in the Federal Register Notice.  It asks for ideas that “may relate to government-wide or agency specific policy, project ideas, and relevant examples. Comments may address law, policy, technology, culture, and practice on issues such as:

• What government information should be more readily available on-line or more easily searched?
• How might the operations of government be made more transparent and accountable?
• How might federal advisory committees, rulemaking, or electronic rulemaking be better used to improve decision making?
• What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decision making and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
• What are the limitations to transparency?
• What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in agencies?
• What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
• What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
• What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open government policies?”

According to the Federal Register notice, you’ve got until June 19th to submit your comments.   But according to Jarrett’s blog, she says there will be three phases:

• Brainstorming.  Via the Open Government Dialogue, citizens can offer their ideas and vote on ideas posted by others, until May 28th.
• Discussion.  A weblog will be used to flesh out the most compelling ideas, beginning June 3rd.
• Drafting.  Join a wiki starting on June 15^th to help draft recommendations in a collaborative fashion.

It’ll be interesting to see the scale of public response and whether these new Web 2.0 approaches are capable of handling the responses!

Changing Washington: Obama’s First 100 Days

On his first day in office, President Obama began acting on his campaign promise to “change the way Washington does first directive to agencies articulated a set of principles of how he wants the government to do its business:  more transparency in how government does it work, more citizen participation via the Internet, and more collaboration within and between agencies as well as across sectors. 

 

As I noted in a recent radio interview with Jason Miller of WFED, President Obama has reinforced these principles with a series of specific actions.  These actions are beginning to outline several emerging governance themes:

 

Increasing transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration using Web 2.0 and social media.  This administration seems committed to leveraging the power of Web 2.0 and related social media as new tools for governing.  This is reflected in the appointments he has made for both the first chief technology officer and first chief information officer of the U.S. as well as early action on addressing barriers to the use of social media in government, such as the government’s recent agreement with Facebook and other social media sites to open them up to greater federal participation.

 

Using cross-agency, issue-oriented, problem-solving approaches to address large public challenges.  The Obama Administration is using issue-oriented, cross-agency, problem solving approaches to address specific challenges such as the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, healthcare reform, budget reform, climate change, and food safety.  Some have complained about too many “czars” and too much centralization of power in the White House, but these new ways of governing will likely evolve.

 

Changing the way Washington works.   President Obama committed to “changing the way Washington works” by focusing on reforms to the core business processes in government, especially the budget process, the contracting system, and the regulatory system.  For example, his emphasis on reforming government contracting requires more competition, more fixed-price contracts, better contract management, and more accountability.  In his most recent radio address, he says he is committed to fixing the budget process so it addresses rather than skirts hard decisions.  He also has placed an emphasis on stronger ethical standards for his appointees and greater transparency in interactions with lobbyists.

 

Focusing on fiscal responsibility, accountability and oversight.  The Administration has emphasized the importance of greater transparency, accountability, oversight, and risk management as approaches to restore citizen trust in the government’s ability to effectively use public dollars.  This has been most evident in the implementation of the Recovery Act with the creation of the Recovery Act Transparency Board, and the President’s statements that he will cut $100 million in administrative costs and $2 trillion in spending in a line-by-line review of the government.

 

Reinforcing an emphasis on performance and results. President Obama emphasized a performance-and-results orientation during his campaign by vowing to appoint a chief performance officer who would work with agencies to set performance targets and ensure they focused on results.  His appointment of Jeff Zients to this role, who will be dual-hatted as deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget, are a start.  The IBM Center report by Shelley Metzenbaum may serve as a possible framework for action.

 

Strengthening public service.  President Obama says he wants to “make government cool again.”  He also signed the Serve America Act which dramatically increases our nation’s commitment to both public as well as volunteer service.  Recent efforts by organizations such as the Partnership for Public Service have reinforced these efforts. 

 

In summary, 100 days into his Administration, President Obama doesn’t seem to be following a grand management reform scheme but rather seems to be pursuing pragmatic approaches targeted to specific problems – whether in improving food safety, implementing the Recovery Act, or tackling climate change.  The common theme, though, is that these approaches seem to be largely collaborative, results-oriented, and network-based.  Interestingly, Professor Don Kettl predicted last year in his book “The Next Government of the United States” that the next president would need to pursue such an approach if he were to be effective.