The Philippine Online Chronicles

After a year in office, the Obama administration made available significant government data as part of its transparency policy.

In his memorandum issued last December 8, US President Barack Obama said, “we will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.”

Under the White House’ "Open Government Directive," each department must post online at least three collections of "high-value" government data that never have been previously disclosed, Associated Press reported.

"These steps underscore my administration's commitment to creating an unprecedented level of transparency and public participation in government," Obama said in a statement. "Through our open government efforts, we are bringing down the walls between the government and the American people."

Required to release data sets are the departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency, the offices of the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

A total of nearly 300 new sets of data are now online.

White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said, "We're democratizing data."

"The data can spur innovation," said US chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra. "Entrepreneurs, corporations, and ordinary Americans can build value on top of this raw material into applications that will improve our quality of life," he said in an Agence France Presse report.

Patrice McDermott, the director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog organization welcomed the directive saying, “the Open Government Directive, when fully implemented, will take the federal government many steps toward real openness.  But she earlier expressed concerns with oversight requirements, according to CNET.

"The agencies are all each required to put up these open government plans," McDermott said, "but there's no indication of who's going to oversee them and oversee their implementation and the quality of their implementation.”

Another watchdog, Gov 2.0 also gave their reactions to the policy.

The raw data released by the various departments and agencies is online and viewable at Data.gov.

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