In addition to work on the action plan, which centers on transparency and public access to information and research pertaining to the federal government, the committee will advise the GSA’s administrator on open government issues, challenges and opportunities that emerge in order to support the agency’s open government secretariat. 

“The OG FAC will allow GSA to tackle emerging open government issues, challenges, and opportunities through expert advice from these stakeholders,” Krystal Brumfield, GSA’s associate administrator for government-wide policy, said in a press release. “We look forward to receiving innovative suggestions on the development of the sixth Open Government National Action Plan as well as other efforts to strengthen open government policy and public engagement.”

The committee, as outlined in a Federal Register post, will consist of between 10 and 20  federal and non-federal members that possess “strong background and expertise” in open government and improving government delivery services. Outside of federal agency officials, the committee is open to nominees from state and local government, industry and academia. 

The post lists background themes to include anti-corruption, digital governance, gender and inclusion, media freedom, public participation and more. 

The GSA said the OG FAC will meet “at least four times per year” and the convenings will be open to the public unless otherwise determined by appropriate authorities. 

Additionally, the agency’s open government secretariat is set to host a public session in May to field questions regarding the selection process and timeline.

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The six-page document sets out the federal government’s commitments to openness for the next two years, from 2019 through 2021. It includes a total of eight governmentwide “initiatives,” many of which are already ongoing.

The first initiative, to “Publish a Comprehensive Federal Data Strategy,” may sound familiar — it’s a commitment first made by the President’s Management Agenda in March 2018. And commitment number five, “Create Agency-Level Chief Data Officers”? That’s a component of the bipartisan OPEN Government Data Act, passed earlier this year.

But while some open government advocates critique the recompiling of existing efforts as a way to avoid making further commitments to transparency and openness, the White House says this strategy is a feature, not a bug.

“You can’t talk enough about your priorities,” a White House official involved in the creation of the plan told FedScoop. The international community that makes up the Open Government Partnership — a voluntary group of countries that first came together in 2011 — may not be as familiar with the work of the U.S. government as D.C.-based advocacy groups. And it’s this international community that is the “primary audience” for the document, the official said.

The plan doesn’t hide the fact that it chooses to put the spotlight on ongoing work instead of setting new goals. “This action plan seeks to highlight relevant and illustrative commitments that advance open governance objectives and the broader goals of the OGP community,” the document states.

Past plans, in contrast, have laid out both ongoing efforts across the government and new initiatives. They’ve also tended to include a lot more — the third NAP, for reference, included 45 commitments when it was released in October 2015.

Officials have said the goal with NAP 4 was to create a more “streamlined” edition, largely on the advice of the OGP. “They were like we really want you to focus on five to ten high-profile, high-impact projects,” the White House official told FedScoop.

But the plan isn’t just lighter on content than its predecessors. It’s also between six and seventeen months late, depending on how one measures.

This delay didn’t go unnoticed — the OGP placed the U.S. “under review” in January after it failed to meet an (already extended) deadline of Dec. 31, 2018. OGP generally moves slowly, if at all, to chastise countries that fall short of their commitments, so having a founding nation of the partnership like the U.S. out of compliance for too long could have created legitimacy issues for the group.

Given all this, the publication of a fourth national action plan, the first under a new political administration, is “a victory” for OGP, the White House official said. The official admitted that there were internal debates about whether to continue the U.S. participation in OGP. The fact that this question was decided in the affirmative further institutionalizes the initiative, the official argued.

The broader issue here, of course, is the political environment in which this plan makes its debut.

When FedScoop interviewed various members of open government and transparency groups in October 2017, when NAP 4 was first supposed to be released, many expressed concern over what it means to have the Trump administration — which has openly flaunted transparency norms — involved in an open government effort. Demand Progress, for example, declined to participate in the drafting of the NAP 4, citing what it called Trump’s “authoritarian policies.”

Open government advocate Alex Howard did participate but says he was underwhelmed by the co-creation process and what was ultimately chosen to be included in the plan. “The final objective [of NAP 4], which is aimed at improving ‘Public Participation in Developing Future U.S. National Action Plans,’ is painfully ironic, given how little effort at public engagement the Trump White House and federal agencies made over the past two years,” he wrote on E Pluribus Unum on Friday.

The NAP 4 document doesn’t address this.

The White House officials who worked to get the plan out the door understand that it will face criticisms from various angles, but hope the document will be assessed based on what it achieves.

“Ultimately, it should be judged based on whether or not we fulfill the commitments,” the official said.

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The forthcoming document will, as its three predecessors have, set U.S. open government goals for the next two years. The perennial mission is to make the government more “open, accountable and responsive.”

But this year’s plan — the first under the Trump White House — is being created in the context of a presidency that isn’t often perceived to value openness, accountability or responsiveness. So what does that mean for the United States’ commitment to the multilateral Open Government Partnership it helped create?

Officials at the Office of Management and Budget, which is overseeing the creation of the document, are confident that it is a nonpartisan, governmentwide issue. But open government experts are concerned that the White House’s seeming disregard for transparency may seep into the plan.

The goals

OMB officials imagine the new plan will be a little different from past editions in some key ways. Firstly, they hope it’ll be more “streamlined.” The third NAP, released in October 2015, for reference, included 45 “commitments” at the outset, and more were added in September 2016. It was a big document, it covered a lot of ground, and officials say some the feedback accused it of being a little confusing.

So this time they hope to organize the NAP around a handful of core themes, pulled from the suggestions of federal agencies and civil society. There are currently 143 suggested commitments on the National Action Plan GitHub page.

GitHub is being used as a central repository for ideas, officials confirmed, joking about how this lends transparency to the creation of plans for further transparency.

The call-out for participation on the National Action Plan page at open.usa.gov also hints at how the fourth plan will be different.

“This year marks an important transition for U.S. commitments to open government, as we move from the broader initial set of initiatives and activities that have characterized our NAPs in the past, to a more streamlined, impactful, and elevated set of commitments,” the site reads.

“Commitments should be achievable by June 2019,” it continues. “They should be new, ambitious, and measureable (sic).”

All this said, OMB officials made it clear they still “don’t know exactly what [the plan] will look like.” That’s because the it’s still in creation — on Oct. 2 the GitHub page closed to further submissions, and now the hard work of building a coherent single document begins.

Though this work is being led by the White House, officials took pains to explain that it’s not a partisan matter. “This is not about the White House or the administration,” the official told FedScoop.

Rather it’s about “good government” — a standard, the official suggested, that everyone can agree on.

Civil society’s concerns

Despite this talking point, politics is never far from view.

Various members of open government and transparency groups have expressed concern over what it means to have the Trump administration — which has openly flaunted transparency norms like the expectation that a presidential candidate releases his or her tax returns — involved in an open government effort.

Demand Progress, for example, declined to participate in the drafting of the NAP this time around, citing what it called Trump’s “authoritarian policies.”

In a blog post from September, the Sunlight Foundation’s Alex Howard and John Wonderlich also questioned this White House’s legitimacy on issues of transparency.

“From tax reform to foreign affairs, the Trump White House has lost the ability to make reliable commitments on substantive policy altogether, as near-constant contradiction and disinformation from the President himself render all White House policies tentative and temporary, eroding the trust of the nation’s allies and strengthening the hands of autocrats who thrive in post-truth environments,” the post states.

Over the past month Howard has attended multiple NAP4 co-creation meetings organized by OMB — meetings he told FedScoop were “well-run” by people who believe in the mission. But his reservations remain — at the end of the day a non-binding, voluntary pact like a National Action Plan for Open Government is only as good as the actions actually taken.

OMB responded to these concerns by reiterating that this is not about the White House.

“Consistent with all U.S. National Action Pans, the fourth U.S. National Action Plan will be a United States government document including priorities across the whole of government,” officials said in a statement. “OMB is proud to support the fourth U.S. National Action Plan co-creation process. We have had bipartisan input on the fourth U.S. National Action Plan from a broad constituency through a series of in-person events and online submissions. We are continually committed to creating a more accountable United States Government that will best benefit the American people.”

Another area of concern is the content of the plan. At an invite-only co-creation event at the General Services Administration on Sept. 8, the discussion focused on the promise of emerging technologies like blockchain and machine learning. Now many suggested commitments related to blockchain are displayed on the NAP4 GitHub.

But, Howard said, it is important to disentangle technology from open government. Sure, technology has the potential to aid in transparency efforts. But it is a means, not the end itself.

Hudson Hollister, founder of the Data Coalition, echoed some of this sentiment. “I’ll be perfectly frank,” he said. “For now blockchain is a distraction.”

From the Data Coalition perspective, the potential for blockchain in the federal government (while enticing) is still a while off — first the government needs standardized open data practices.

It bears mentioning, however, that the U.S. is not alone in what experts see as a conflation of e-government (the means) and transparency (the end). Multiple open government advocates told FedScoop that the National Action Plans of other Open Government Partnership countries also tend to be technology-focused.

Hollister, for one, is pleased that NAP4 is being drafted, and that civil society gets a chance to weigh in. He described the administration officials who are convening the co-creation meetings as “invested.”

“I’m happy that it’s happening,” he said. “I’d prefer the Trump administration to keep doing it.” It’ll be up to civil society, he said, to hold the government accountable to the content of the plan.

Most immediately, civil society will be able to assess the good faith with which the administration approaches this process by observing what suggested commitments ultimately get included in the final NAP.

Howard has a test in mind — the co-creation process will be successful, he said, “to the extent that this administration accepts commitments that come from people who do [open government work] for a living.”

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