Help Advance Open Government

The purpose of the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan is to advance transparency, accountability, citizen participation, and technological innovation across government. Now, thanks to an effort supported by the General Services Administration, you have until October 2, 2017 – just a few more days – to share your ideas to advance open government and provide feedback on others’ suggestions using GitHub.

Github is a social coding platform that the federal government has adopted to gather public feedback on policies like the federal source code policy. The National Archives is using the site to allow the public to contribute to our current Agency Open Government Plan, and to foster discussion about our new Strategic Plan.

As the Archivist of the United States, one of my priorities has been to show how a small agency like the National Archives can not only contribute, but lead in fulfilling the vision of open government’s three principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Since 2010, the National Archives has made and delivered on close to two hundred specific commitments in our agency open government plans, and the National Archives has had responsibility for critical components of the U.S. Open Government National Action Plans, including leading work to modernize recordkeeping across the federal government and help agencies transition to a modern, electronic world.

There is always more to do, though. One of the commitments proposed by the National Archives for the Fourth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan is tightly aligned with the vision laid out in our new Strategic Plan to streamline digital access to our nation’s records and accelerate the adoption of electronic record-keeping practices by federal agencies. This proposed commitment requires NARA to no longer accept transfers of records to the National Archives in a non-digital format after December 31, 2022. In response to feedback the National Archives received on our Strategic Plan from staff and external commenters, we have updated the Plan to modified the language of this objective to recognize that NARA may need to accept a limited number of analog records after the deadline.

We are eager to hear from you! I hope you will take the opportunity to browse the ideas that have already been submitted and share your reactions. In addition to the commitment to streamline access to digital records, the National Archives has submitted several potential commitments involving the work of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Ombudsman housed within the National Archives, the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS); these commitments include efforts to improve the efficiency of the FOIA process through the use of advisory opinions and to increase coordination between agency records management and FOIA offices.

We look forward to hearing your ideas and feedback, and to working with you to continue to drive forward open government.

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