All federal government agencies are currently under pressure to respond on strict timelines to the Open Government Directive (OGD) that recently came down from the Office of Management and Budget. Agencies are directed to take steps to create a more open, transparent, and participatory government.What these steps look like, and the trajectory they take, is still largely open. Recently, I saw one take on the issue, which was phrased by a Department of Transportation contractor as “the Google approach.” Let’s see what that looks like.

Jenn Gustetic, an Associate at Phase One Consulting Group in Washington, tweeted that their “Google approach” was to “build as they go.” Well, that’s an understatement. Their site, dot.gov/open, has nothing in it. That’s not open – that’s empty.

Sunlight Labs has a theoretical resource called Open Watcher, in which they keep track of which of the 14 major federal agencies have debuted an open government website. Department of Transportation gets a green checkmark for deploying a page. Open government standards in Washington seem to be lower those we apply to the Redskins. They have tried to do something, and made it public, so they get a checkmark. Everyone else has a big red X – and that means they’re bad.

How ridiculous is this?

Some pundits, like Chris Dorobek of Federal News Radio, have also commented on the emptiness of the DOT page. More than the emptiness of the website, though, I worry about the emptiness of this extreme version of the “build it as you go” approach. I’m all for deploying an imperfect website and getting user feedback, but celebrating a web address, as another Phase One Associate, Heather Miller, wishes us to do, falls somewhere between wishful and giddy.

Where does the “Google approach” to open government leave us? It leaves us with an approach of “check the box government,” in which being open means (1) deploying a website that claims to do something, (2) linking its updates to a Twitter account so you’re “social,” (3) creating a fan page on Facebook so that you can count “fans” and have another metric for your weekly report, and (4) coasting, knowing that you have succesfully made the government more “open.”

Checking boxes has nothing to do with being social, collaborating, or engaging public audiences. It has everything to do with bureaucrats and contractors. Open government is not so much a directive to be responded to but rather a state of mind that needs to be reached.  Maybe we should rebrand it “Yoga Government.”

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous