Webinar: New HHS Open Government Plan

Date: January 25, 2012
Speakers:
Gregory Downing (HHS/OS) and Elizabeth (HHS/ASPE) – to discuss the purpose of the Open Government plan, and seek HHS input on organizational changes that enable collaboration and participation to enhance open government activities.
Read the Blog: Help Us Develop Our new Open Gov Plan
http://www.slideshare.net/HHSNewMedia/ webinar-hhs-open-government-plan-version-2
Download Slides (PDF)
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If you have questions regarding this webinar or the HHS Center for New Media Webinar series, email newmedia@hhs.gov.
Transcript

This is make with HHS, I am here with Greg Downingtown office of the secretary  and a list of this -- [Indiscernable Name] -- they are both leaders on innovation Council and we will be talking about the HHS (and  version 2 -- the HHS Open Government Plan  version 2. Before we get started we are going to wait for people to join the call, hang tight. 

[Silence] 

Hello everyone, we are going to start now, this is make again. I have Greg Downing and [Indiscernable Name] hear from HHS innovations  Council. They are going to talk about the second version of the Open Government Plan  HHS plan . We will talk about your role in how they will be taking feedback, if you want to ask questions during the broadcast there is a chat box and the questions box, we will do our best to answer those as they come in. 

Without further ado, this is Greg Downing and Elizabeth. 

Hello, thank you for the opportunity, we are really excited about the notion of getting your input and working on the planning process, this is a bit of a luxury that we did not have the first time around when we engaged in the process. 

You should have with you or in your screen the presentation that we put together. I want to give you a background of who we are and how we do our work and what open Government is about for HHS . We think some of the things that you are probably working on might get some opportunities for trade by the Open Government Plan . 

A historical perspective, a Lizabeth and I worked together for three years on innovation activities with the department and have interacted with all of the operating divisions and staff divisions on promoting the elements a cross HHS . We work with the innovation Council but it is an agencywide idea factory. It is steered by our assistant Secretary. for administration , Ned and Todd, our chief technology year. They are overseeing the Council which has been designated by administration for the coordinating body for planning activities. 

We work closely with the White House on the planning and timing of this eerie at --.

 There is a stakeholder that is interested in the work we are doing and you are doing and we look forward to engaging them further as we go out in the plan. 

The icon double officials include [Indiscernable Name] and Allan Murray who is the assistant secretary for financial resources eerie at they have the accountability to many elements of the plan, we are here on their behalf. Our mission, with your help, is to put together a spectacular planned for this coming spring in the celebration of the open Government activities that the administration has been behind. 

I will go to the presentation today in this is low key, we will approach the presentation this way and we invite your questions and comments as we are going forward. If you have not heard of the Open Government Plan that is currently existing, you will find at HHS. to/open -- HHS.gov/open, we encourage you to take a quick look at that and see what is there. We will be working from a general framework for the new plan that was developed back in 2010. To take you back in time and -- a little bit, in January 21, 2009, that was Inauguration Day and a cool day in Washington. On the first day of work he issued a open Government directive, it was to drive a few key components to improve the access that the public has to the government and federal government process. 

Later in that year we receive from the Office of Management and Budget by [Indiscernable Name] who was the deputy to Peter R. Sieg and is now the acting director and cares very much about open government. On December 8, 2009, he issued a memorandum that gave us a framework under which our activities are undertaken. To place yourself back in time to the January 2009 time period, that was before we had accountable care ask in the high-technology had not been implemented, social media and new technologies had not yet come to the department. It snowed in January, and a few other of things -- other things like that, there was a lot of change that has happened and a lot of things put into the first plan that moved this along. 

In terms of the technology and capabilities that we have to work with the public and to disseminate information, a lot has changed. We do not have time to characterize all of the pieces that were the first plan, but needless to say, there was a lot of exciting things, new initiatives that many of your organization's have undertaken. 

We want to build on the strength of those and to capture the progress that has been made over the last few years. We want to set a new course for activities that we will be charting. 

The three elements briefly are, transparency, making information available. We have to say that in the initial plan, the open data component of the activities at HHS have been  hit out of the ballpark many times over. In terms of open data and capabilities and sharing data they have been recognized across the government as the most innovative activity. 

The other two components are participation, that has to do with how the public can interact with us, it is a great place for new media constructs to be deployed in the future. Further collaboration and how we work with outside communities, state governments, local communities. We are encouraged to focus on these latter two in this year's plan. That is not to diminish data availability or data transparency, but these are areas where working with stakeholder organizations we will talk more about this. 

The current plan was developed by an ad hock process in early 2010. It was done by a series of interviews with key leaders and stakeholders, at the time many new frameworks and operations were coming into the department. There is a good chance of the things we are talking about today may not have even existed from the legislative perspective or administrative. But we've a lot more to build on than we did before. 

We put together a draft plan and published it at the open website and user for public comments and blog input. We had several hundred inputs to the blog site. Those were factored in the that was published on April 7, 2010. The plan itself had 82 projects that we have defined and been able to track over time. There were five flagship initiatives. They were decided upon by the importance that they brought in implementing new strategies across the department eerie at one of them was at CMS as a dashboard for data transparency is. There was excellent in administrative and a community health initiatives, they rounded up the flagship, they have all done quite well in terms of measurable improvement. 

We have published and presented to OMB every six months and we have met with  a large number of stakeholder groups who are interested in Open Government activity. They ask a lot of questions for budget data reporting  processes, to many other elements of data transparency that have been their primary concerns. 

Of Huxley 94% of the specific initiatives have been completed or near completed, several others have not been and probably will not be for technical reasons or the plans have changed. 

There has been a lot of stakeholder input, blogs, and papers written about Open Government activities across HHS . 

Many of the goals were exceeded, particularly in the data transparency area. 

We have also gotten comments and ideas on how to further strengthen the performance. 

We are geared up to building on that success and make the next round of planning processes as successful as the past, if not more. 

On the slide is a series of government white initiatives that have been performed and are under way, a lot of traction have been gained with them. 

Data.gov is a cataloging and hosting environment. 

The register is up dated with utilization and regulations. It is a big part of the overall aspect of open government in terms of the way the public presents information and regulatory decisions are made. 

We have a lot of dashboards with accountability and USA spending, IT dashboards and recovery.gov, all of those are data resources that are publicly available using the web for dissemination. 

Regulations.gov Inchon shock other platforms that we use for citizen engagement, there is a strong record in that area as well. 

Last month, we got a phone call and went to a meeting at the White House, OMB  was there and OSTP said we did well but they need a new one, much of the time frame of the plan was for 2 to 3 years, this is not totally in expect it. The version to plan -- version 2 has not come with any specific requirements other than the things you see on your screen, the final version of one will be included, we will handle that part, we are not asking anyone to take on the burden of doing that. 

We have been collecting the information as we go on long. 

We are looking for new fudge the -- flagship initiatives to be completed in 2013, and some in 2014, it is a three year time her rights and in which -- timeline in which things are brought online in completed. 

There is a lot of latitude into the public input process, we have some ideas that we will share with the and hopefully engage in some of the new media outlets in our effort to include the public, not only in commenting on the plan, but providing input as we go along in the planning process itself.
Elizabeth will update us on that shortly. 

And strategy overall is to build on the past track record, we finished at the top of the league last time, our management here strives to keep that record going. 

We want to leverage our existing planning efforts that have complementary activities across open government already.

I think we recognize that the strategic plan has been developed. There is a lot of other sustainability and initiations of this timeframe. We have a lot of other planning capabilities that minimize the need for another planning committee. 

We are using CIO Council, planning and a valuation communities, budgeting processes, and so far as -- so forth as ways to disseminate the way the plan is being developed. Hopefully with some of the tools that we will talk about today we will get your input on how the plan will be to develop -- developed. 

We are working hard with one organization on ways to improve the participation and collaboration. 

America speaks is a not-for-profit entity that provides a lot of input to the government. We partnered with a number of activities to this point, they are providing us with elements and ways to look at metrics of participation, we lost you to think hard about what ways your organization is engaging with the public and perhaps using the media in ways to do that that we have not heard about before. 

There are a couple of other new areas that we were suggested to include, one of those areas has to do with large data. The White House has initiatives that we have been working with collecting issues and new activities related to large data set analysis and the computational areas where parts of the department are dealing with the burden of large data sets and complex data sets and those that are growing at rapid rate. This is a department wide effort and we are including elements of the Open Government around that. 

The elements of smart disclosure have to do with  many regulatory activities across the department, several parts are already helping, subsidize -- such as insurance and policy information and other kinds of disclosure related to medical products and so forth. There may be other activities that we are not knowledgeable about that we are taking on to make information about particular consumer services more broadly available to them. 

We will talk more about that later. 

As mentioned earlier the innovation Council is the chief body that will make recommendations to our leadership about the report and the flagship initiatives that will be included and featured in it is. The updates and implementation reports that we have developed over the last couple of years for the first plan and the flagship initiative is one area that we are on the lookout for potential. 

We want to talk about what they would represent, they tend to be ones that are representing more than one agency or more than one element. Meaning they are focused on transparency and participation. They develop new and transformative approaches to open government. 

What we will do is as we ask you to identify potential topics to be discussed in the plan, we want to ask if you will keep that in mind and designate potential candidates and activities that will be tracked under Open Government  overall. They will have old way in with that -- a way into that. 

And we want to look for ways to engage external communities, that is very welcome. We spend a lot of time going around to different groups and we are more than happy to do that. 

On the screen is a rough outline of what the plan will look like, I will not go through the details but it is modeled after the existing plan and we expect it to be somewhat lighter in nature relative to the original plan which was nearly 80 pages in length and hard to sift through. There will be an executive summary and hopefully some graphics that can orient quick reads to people as to what types of projects are being highlighted. 

Our timelines are pretty tight and driven by the White House, we have a draft outline that will be going to them on February 9. It looks like the one used on the previous slide, we will use the template method to disseminate broadly across the department and requests of mission for initiatives that we can include for a new open government plan. 

We have been even a box that we will be using to have those submitted. This is a much more crowd sourced approach to idea generation. 

It also diminishes the importance of going through hierarchal structures in the organization. 

Many of you will have clearance processes internally, but we will clear the entire plan from March 9 to March 23 and then have that delivered approximately 10 days before it is due to be published. 

We anticipate a public comment period through the end of May. 

We hope to have a mechanism available to us through the planning process that we can use to gauge questions from the public overall. 

We are working with OMB to figure out a way to do that in a timely fashion  that does not violatePRAA and other activities. 

We are really speaking to you today to get your ideas on new media strategies that address any of the Open Government  activities. We will go over the template the you receive in your e-mail today. 

That is a vehicle to submit ideas to us, it is not a high-tech approach to getting the singer, but we do not have a lot of time to work with, specifically for your organization we are really looking at new ideas and opportunities in which new capabilities serve to meet the needs of informing the public and getting ideas from them. 

We are locked King -- looking for point that we are missing along the way," ideas of things that people are missing and ministry to fully and with external groups that moved the ball on getting information out and utilizing the technology that we have today. 

I'm going to stop there, we want to thank you for your interest in ideas. We would be happy to discuss more of those ideas there. If there are not any questions about the presentation, we will let a Lizabeth to the template and have the back on information there. 

As Greg said, we sent you a draft template for your submission, we want to reinforce and collect new ideas about participation and the engagement of the public. As Greg said, you all have a really big grasp of the initiative and we are looking forward to your submission. We are asking that you send your submission to us by Friday, February 24, it is a simple method, we are looking for a short write up of the initiative it is a one-page narrative. 

If you want to see a prior example you can look at the first plan, there is no standard format. We want to know what operating staff vision is involved in the initiative and the anticipated start or end date. Key milestones, categorized and initiatives and tell us if it relates to transparency or participation and collaboration. If you think it is a flagship initiative that is cost cutting and involves more than one agency or more than one aspect, let us know and you can put in Asterix on that. Send it to us in a Microsoft Word document. 

The format is really simple, but we would love to hear what some of the ideas or initiatives are that are happening in your agency, particularly with respect to new media that we might want to highlight. 

This is a great opportunity to highlight to the White House and the rest of us things that are going on. 

You do not have to devote new resources, this can be things that are ongoing or planned, but this is a new venue to highlight these types of things. 

Does anyone have any questions? 

We have our monthly round-robin calls in which many people share ongoing initiatives, this would be a good opportunity while we have this to tell them a little bit about some of your initiatives or ask them about if your initiatives might qualify under this version of the open government plan. 

Catherine, one thing we want to dispel is that for something to be featured as to be some big landmark thing that has come through Congress.

Some of the most impactful things from our previous plans have not been crosscutting programs, but new techniques and capabilities. What people really like is that it's a way to share experience from one part of the department to others. 

Some of that has to do with the ways in which advisory committees were engaged or media was used to help facilitate discussion at a particular meeting or conference. 

I really want to dispel that this has to be viewed as some big landmark piece of a program that has hundreds of millions of dollars attached to it. 

We really are trying to take it vantage of other existing processes. 

It may not have started yet but we are moving through that. 

Those are things that we would like to hear about. 

One last note is in the write up it would help us to keep the consumer reader in mind. That is to our work will be destined for. It will help us with jargon in particular to help with organizational acronyms so that we can readily put this together without a lot of interpretation and having to go back and forth. 

It may be the case that you do not feel you are the owner of the idea, but if you help surface it or send Greg and I and e-mail saying this is an interesting idea, we can locate the right person to write it out. 

It will help us to identify the agency and program level. 

We have a couple of questions. 

Yes, the slides will be available. 

The slides you should've received in an e-mail today, they were sent out at 1 PM today, the registered after that point than the slides will be available on the media website on the webinar page. 

There is another question, we are piloting an intern a collaboration site, not public, but internal to the organization, it has shown benefits in reaching across organizations within our office and sharing great ideas. Would this be something that we can use?

I will take that one, in our discussions last week we focused on this. 

Customer service is an example of that were certain activities within the department business operations are being streamlined and they will help people in their internal management of the government to get information faster. 

This is definitely something that we would include and think has value overall in the demonstration of how technology overcomes organizational barriers. 

We would encourage that idea to come up. 

Ideation platforms are one of our strengths. 

There are a number of divisions that have experimented with this over the last couple of years, it is one of the things that we feature. We have a fair amount of experience with CDC and FDA. Definitely those things help us do our job better and they should be thought of as well. 

Another question, will the plan it self conformed to plain language requirement? 

That is our goal. As you know from the first plan, it is not completely 508 compliant either, we are working very hard to conform with the standards for publication, particularly given the audience we are shooting for. We could use some help with that. 

The starting point for that would be in the eye DS of mission it self. -- Idea submission itself. 

That would be helpful to keep in mind. 

I have a follow-up question for a Lizabeth, as some of you know, we coordinate EE [Inaudible-unrecognizable terminology], I am curious as to how some of these will be included or relate to the government plan?

In the first version we just highlighted the contest itself, in this version we have a new interracial and, we will be including a public voting aspect so we will all of the public to help select the finalists and the top winners. 

We could certainly think about looking at those. 

One thing to keep in context is most of the things that come through our things that have been completed. There may be ongoing themes that come out of that, but I would look through those parts of the portfolio. We have been getting more idea submissions and some fantastic ideas that are out there. Keep in mind that this is forward-looking and the the innovation and submissions tend to be completed. 

Can you say more about how you plan to operationalize transparency am a collaboration or participation in ways that will improve how these are assessed in version 1.0? 

That is a great question, theimplementationn we largely make when we track and follow the plans. It basically has been our responsibility overall. We have met with the evaluations methods. It was relatively unknown when we cost of the plan. There was no engagement up front with the sunlight foundation or others. We had a general idea what they were looking for and it took a year to a year and a half for the evaluation parameters to get worked out. If you go to open the government.org you will see that one of the latest plans overall is hard to follow and it has been done chronologically. There was a fair amount of negotiation that went on, this is not terribly top-down as you can tell, we work through the innovation Council and bring in the stakeholder to have conversations and make hesitations. There is no quantitative score, it is more qualitative measures of the plans overall. 

Then we mark progress is implemented Ihde reports as being completed or not completed. 

There has been a subjective characterization of HHS  and the plan by the administration. 

To my knowledge there has not been any new changes to the evaluations overall, though we meet monthly from across the department and they critique us on the milestones that we reach. 

It is not really rigorous, but they go through each plan and meet with us. It a -- the with us from time to time, does that answer your question? 

While we are waiting for an answer, does anyone else have another project that they are working on that they want to share or asked questions about?

If we have people that come up with questions later on that were notanswered,, or they had not thought of it at the time of the webinar, should they contact you directly or HHS.gov? 

Either way is fine, I did want to mention a couple of other strategies that we are using, we may want to talk briefly about this if it is okay. From a participation category we recognize in the first plan that working with coordinators and the advisory committee chairs was a good way to see how they were engaging technology, that was a very valuable experience that we are working on. We are putting out a survey to see how they interface, we did select targeted interviews with a number of the major operating divisions, and a number of teams. I don't know who will have the time to do it this time, but we are looking to you for ideas, and we will certainly discuss them. There was a letter from the Secretary. core on January 19 and it went to all operating division heads, it outlines the strategy and the platforms for outreach. 

We did not think a top-down approach was the best way. The plan will definitely be clear to the department so everyone will be able to see what everyone else is doing. 

Do want to talk about other -- [Speaker Interrupted]? 

There is a blog post about the plan and there are questions from the public we would love your thoughts and input on how to further disseminate that. 

The other thing that we are working on is possibly a more structured survey for the public with a few more structured questions. We are working to get that through, but when and if that happens we would certainly like the help of this group in getting the word out so we can get input into the plan and hear from the public what are the areas that they want to participate and collaborate and what are some of the ways in which they want to do that.

If you have any other information that you would like to distribute to the community, you are welcome to send it to our listeners. We will help you with that site as well. 

We thoroughly enjoyed working with you and so has the Council. We've enjoyed working with you in the last year or so and we are making tremendous progress in the way that the public gets information about to hear. We are working really hard on trying to lower some of the barriers for technology and we've been making reasonable progress, I would not shy away from presenting your ideas here. The Council of like to provide that an administration has been forthcoming from the administration on down. This gave us an opportunity to look back and see where we were in 2009. We would love to have better ways to measure the impact of all of that. 

And the last chance for questions? 

I know that they would be very enthusiastic and appreciative for your support and wish they could be here today, let us know if you have questions about the presentation or ideas about how we can do it better. We are here to listen and take advantage of all of the things you are doing. 

Thank you everyone for joining us, if you go to the new media website@newmedia.HHS.gov to view previous webinars. They will be posted on their soon as well. Thank you everyone and enjoy the extra time that you're getting from the sour -- this hour.
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Webinar: New HHS Open Government Plan

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