2009, the first year of President Barack Obamaâs tenure as chief executive, was all about building open government policies, federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra told Federal News Radio recently.
2010 was about actually implementing those policies, he added.
And, in a segment for the radio station, Chopra said listeners should view those moves to enact open government policies as the biggest story of 2010.
Why?
The Open Government Directive, issued in December 2009, made openness a priority at every agency, and has fundamentally changed the culture and âecosystemâ of the federal government, he suggested.
“All [agencies] have demonstrated results in fostering ecosystems to not only publish the data but to do something meaningful with it,” he told Federal News Radio.
Chopra also looked to the future. One of the hallmarks of the year in Open Gov in 2010 was the focus on crowd-sourcing and grassroots projects to spur innovation, exemplified by sites such as data.gov, challenge.gov and USASpending.gov.
That spirit of crowd-sourcing will likely continue as the General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget ramp up a new civic-engagement tool designed to harness not just the wisdom of crowds, but a particular subset of a mass audience â experts. Called ExpertNet, it will allow the government to seek out experts to help form policy.