Wednesday, February 13, 2013
President's Obama's first executive action was to sign the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, which sought to bridge the gap between the American people and their government.
This website, launched in response to the subsequent Open Government Directive, aims to document the U.S. Department of Commerce's efforts to become more open, participatory and collaborative.
Vacant
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration,
Head of Open Government Working Group
open@doc.gov
Catrina Purvis
Chief Privacy Officer
and Director of Open Government
Joey Hutcherson
Deputy Director,
Office of Privacy and Open Government
Interact with Commerce on the social media sites you already use every day.
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whitehouse.gov/open - Learn more about the President's efforts to increase transparency, participation, and collaboration throughout government.
Recovery.gov - See open government in action by tracking the spending associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Data.gov - Access and discover new uses for the range of data produced by the federal government from one central location.
BusinessUSA.gov - See the "no wrong door" approach for small businesses and exporters.
FOIAonline - See the the start of a new era for the Freedom of Information Act within the Department of Commerce.
Open.commerce.gov Links
Office of the Secretary Links
Department of Commerce Person Finder
Office of the Secretary Report to Congress
Office of the Secretary Speeches and Testimony
In May 2012, the President issued Executive Order 13610, which requires Federal agencies to continually scrutinize rules and requirements on the books to make sure they are still necessary, streamlined and up-to-date. He emphasized that agencies should give special consideration to reducing burdens on small businesses and should prioritize “initiatives that will produce significant quantifiable monetary savings or significant quantifiable reductions in paperwork burdens.” Following up on that directive, last June the Administration launched an aggressive paperwork burden reduction effort to eliminate unnecessary burdens on the American people and businesses. Agencies across the Administration heeded the President’s call and submitted paperwork reduction plans. Today, Commerce is posting these paperwork reduction plans, along with our retrospective review update pursuant to Executive Order 13563.
The value of an Open Government is that it will show its ongoing work while still protecting the privacy of its people and security of the nation. This openness is the cornerstone of a great society. Open Government creates a two-way conversation with the public it serves. The conversation is the basis of information collaboration. This collaboration helps the government to visualize, address and solve problems and issues from a boarder perspective than was previously available. The first government wide effort to be open and make more information available to the public was the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). Throughout the years all federal government agencies have looked for methods to achieve the most efficient and cost effective delivery of this FOIA information.
You can read the white paper covering the subject of Government-wide Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Workflow Utilizing a Centralized Repository in PDF file listed below.
The White House's Open Government Directive requires Cabinet-level agencies, such as the Department of Commerce, to pass certain milestones as part of our efforts to be more open and transparent. The timeline below details the specific benchmarks we're moving toward, and shows the Department's progress in achieving them.
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45 days—January 22, 2010
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60 days—February 6, 2010
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| 5 of 5 |
120 days—April 7, 2010
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