2.3.1: Leadership and Governance

Institutionalize the principles of DOI’s Open Government Plan

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Open government at DOI is currently guided by an interim governance structure, composed of a core team who is responsible for developing DOI’s Open Government Plan. Permanent leadership and governance must be established to maintain leadership and support of open government. The goal of the permanent leadership and governance structure is to institutionalize the principles of DOI’s Open Government Plan. Empower employees to better communicate with the public and focus our efforts on what’s important to the citizens, thus help enable mission performance. By making open government an integrated part of daily DOI activities, this initiative may become the regular way of doing business and may result in long-term benefits. The key players identified in the previous section will facilitate this change. The DOI has reached out to employees and the public in its effort to foster the principles of open government. Cross sections of employees from different bureaus and Offices within the department have formed a core working group have worked on this effort. As depicted in Figure 5, the Core Team was divided into several key areas. In addition to this, the internal SharePoint collaboration site utilized by the Core Team was made available to all DOI employees. The timeline shown in Figure 6 shows the weekly meeting schedule and deliverables for the Core Team. The Core Team, formed in early 2010 provides guidance and sustainability on open government to the Department. They have provided access and introduction to stakeholders and subject matter experts during the planning phase. Involvement from such working groups is one way the department hopes to cultivate change. The process initiated for the open government plan does not stop at the publishing of the Plan - DOI intends to treat its Open Government Plan as a living document and review it on a quarterly basis for currency, update, and incorporation of leading practices. Such a quarterly review will encourage the working group and the department to continue the process initiated by the Plan. As part of the institutionalization of transparency, collaboration, and participation throughout DOI, the working group may be responsible for maintaining and updating DOI’s Open Government Plan. The goal is to ensure the Plan is an up-to-date living document that contains all new and revised initiatives that promote open government principles throughout the Department. Additional steps for institutionalizing open government are elaborated later in the document plan, and are highlighted here as follows: 1. Strengthening existing communication channels, especially the ones connected to social media. 2. Leverage public feedback through citizen engagement tools. 3. Promoting external and internal collaboration in the department using citizen engagement tools such as the DOI public website, and the DOI intranet. 4. Identifying pockets of brilliance and the vast array of expertise within the Department by providing incentives such as prizes and awards. 5. Raising the awareness of Data.gov as a tool for transparency, and releasing datasets of value to the public. 6. Encouraging proactive release of information anticipated by the public, thereby reducing future FOIA workload.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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