1.3: Culture Change
Change the culture from top to bottom Other Information:
Creating an atmosphere of openness at VA, the second largest federal agency, will require not only leadership from the top
of the organization, but also significant efforts to integrate these values into our business processes. Therefore, we at
VA will take the following steps to support employee adoption of these values agency-wide: Open Government Online Employee
Forums - We will adopt an online crowd-sourcing platform, used to engage the public while promulgating our VA Open Government
Plan, to allow employee specific input, questions and suggestions for making VA more open and transparent. Our employees have
the most hands-on working knowledge of VA’s business lines. Their input and suggestions will provide excellent feedback on
how to operationalize our Open Government Plan. (For more information please see the participation and flagship initiatives
section of the plan.) Open Government Employee Innovations - Leveraging the success of VHA’s and VBA’s online innovation competitions,
we will hold competitions for employee-generated ideas regarding the future implementation of openness related measures. These
competitions will recognize extraordinary ideas that advance the open and transparency mission of this plan. Using innovative
selection processes, VA employees will select the most innovative ideas for promoting open government at VA. Sharing VA Open
Government Initiatives on our VA intranet site - VA has struggled to communicate with our employees about our efforts and
successes. In the next calendar year we will add a menu of the transparency initiatives, as well as information on how to
get involved (through the online platform and the Innovations Competition) in open government, to the intranet home page.
Innovation Toolkit - Knowing about VA’s open government successes is an important first step, but it will yield little results
without providing VA employees with the correct tools to implement the open government policies. That is why VA is creating
an Innovation Toolkit. This toolkit will outline the methodologies and mechanisms that VA uses to further open government
as well as ways to collaborate with other federal agency employees with similar commitments to openness and transparency.
Celebrate Open Government Successes - In addition to sharing our successes in creating a more open VA within the agency, we
must also communicate our efforts to those outside VA. That is why we will continue our existing social media efforts through
tools such as Facebook and Twitter, and expand to other new media as well.
Indicator(s):
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