Open Government Initiative Blog

Sunshine Week: In Celebration of Transparency

Ed. Note: This post is part of a Sunshine Week series on WhiteHouse.gov. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to celebrate and focus on government transparency and open government.

Sunshine Week is about the importance of transparency, and the public’s right to know what its government is doing. That philosophy has been at the core of the Obama Administration from Day One, and over the last four years we’ve let a lot of sunshine in—including in some domains that are not widely known to the general public but are nonetheless important and deserving of illumination.

In one representative example, the U.S. Government in September 2011 committed to implement the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—a voluntary, global effort designed to increase transparency, strengthen the accountability of natural resource revenues, and build public trust for the governance of these vital activities.  Sunshine Week is a good time to reflect on the notable steps the Administration has taken in the last year-and-a-half to fulfill its commitment to implement EITI, which was launched as part of the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan.

In the true spirit of EITI and the Open Government Partnership, we endeavored from the start to undertake this effort in a collaborative and inclusive fashion, engaging government, the private sector, civil society, and the public. We began with a comprehensive stakeholder assessment, which involved two public comment periods, a webinar, a public workshop, and public listening sessions in Anchorage, Denver, Houston, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.  We conducted tribal consultations at meetings of the National Congress of American Indians, the Alaska Federation of Natives, and tribal advisory committees, and we met with individual tribes engaged in resource extraction. We also consulted with and learned from our counterparts in other countries who have already implemented EITI, to garner best practices. 

Sunshine Week: All Hands on Deck for Open Data

This article was originally posted on whitehouse.gov

This post is part of a Sunshine Week series on WhiteHouse.gov. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to celebrate and focus on government transparency and open government.

On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the launch of open.ny.gov, a new data transparency website that features valuable information about New York State economic development, recreation, and public services. The announcement is an important contribution to the growing “all hands on deck” effort to make government data accessible as fuel for innovation and economic growth.

Unleashing “Open Data”—data freely available in formats that are easy to use in new and innovative ways, while rigorously protecting privacy—has been a priority for the Obama Administration since the beginning. As the President has said, “information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset.”

In addition to catalyzing entrepreneurship, innovation, scientific discovery, and other public benefits, Open Data also helps ensure a transparent, accountable, and open government—goals being celebrated across the Nation this week as part of Sunshine Week.

A great example of an Open Data resource that has led to concrete benefits for citizens and the economy is weather data/the Global Positioning System. Since being made freely available, beginning decades ago, entrepreneurs and innovators have used these information sources to create navigation systems, weather newscasts and warning systems, location-based apps, precision farming tools, and much more.