Data.gov Goes Global

Last week, President Obama’s unprecedented efforts to advance open and transparent Government reached an important milestone. As part of a joint effort by the United States and India to build an open government platform, the U.S. team has deposited open source code– an important benchmark in developing the Open Government Platform that will enable governments around the world to stand up their own open government data sites.

Last week’s announcement is part of a broader effort to make government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. In September, the United States was one of eight founding governments of the Open Government Partnership,a new multilateral initiative that secures concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.The President also  unveiled the U.S. National Action Plan on Open Government, which detailed steps the United States will take to help meet the initiative’s goals.

The plan specifically called for an effort under the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue to produce “Data.gov-in-a-Box” -- an open source version of the United States’ Data.gov data portal and India’s India.gov.in document portal.  The U.S. and India are working together to produce an open source version available for implementation by countries globally, encouraging governments around the word to stand up open data sites that promote transparency, improve citizen engagement, and engage application developers in continuously improving these efforts.  Technical teams from the U.S. and Indian governments have been working together since August of this year, with a planned launch of the open source product (which is now called the Open Government Platform (OGPL) to reflect its broad scope) in early 2012.

The module -- paired with the software for the Open Government Platform website being developed by India -- will enable governments around the world to launch their own open government sites and increase transparency and accountability.  In the meantime, the U.S.-India team will continue to improve and integrate the modules of the Open Government Platform for the planned launch early next year.

Steven VanRoekel is the Federal Chief Information Officer

Aneesh Chopra is the Federal Chief Technology Officer