1.2: Public Engagement

Solicit and incorporate public feedback into our Open Government Plan by using the IdeaScale online citizen engagement tool.

Other Information:

DOT also solicited and incorporated public feedback into our Open Government Plan. The DOT used the IdeaScale online citizen engagement tool (www.opendot.ideascale.com) provided by the General Services Administration (GSA) to collect ideas and comments from the public related to open government issues during the development period. We received a total of 65 ideas and 103 comments, many of which were incorporated into the plan. For example, we received an excellent idea to develop a holistic strategy to help our agency keep up with the rapid pace of new technology development. The idea author rightly noted that many new technologies are emerging at a faster pace than some Federal agencies can keep up with. This often results in government utilizing obsolete technologies that disrupt business and reduce efficiency. To address this, the DOT Open Government Plan includes developing a comprehensive Strategy for Sustainable Change to help with the adoption of new and emerging technologies that can enable more open and effective operations. This strategy is described in more detail in Chapter 3. We also received the suggestion to continue looking into using various types of internal and external collaboration tools to improve information sharing, communication, and morale both with internal DOT employees and the public. The DOT included an entire section (Innovative Methods of Enhancing DOT Public Collaboration, Chapter 3) devoted to establishing processes for identifying innovative ways of enhancing collaboration with the public. The DOT IdeaScale public engagement tool was an excellent opportunity to employ the Open Government principles of public transparency and collaboration during the development of our Open Government Plan itself. As detailed in Chapter 4, the DOT is actively pursuing using online engagement tools to solicit public feedback during the development other DOT plans, such as the 2010-2015 DOT Strategic Plan.

Stakeholder(s):

• Citizens

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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