By Susannah Fox, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Twitter: @HHSIDEALab
On his first day in office, President Obama announced administration policies to make government serve the American people better through greater transparency, collaboration, and participation. Known as the federal government’s Open Government Initiative, each agency has developed a plan every other year outlining steps that we are taking to get better and better at being ‘open’ for your business needs and personal interests.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now seeking public input as we develop our fourth Open Government Plan. You can see our agency’s past three plans here.
The plan will outline specific activities we will undertake over the next two years and we want your input at the outset. The progress from our last plan in 2016 has been substantial. For example, we have:
- new projects underway to enhance the presentation and quality of data from our grants programs;
- implemented new data resources on how our information technology programs are financed;
- created substantial new resources for making scientific publications freely available; and
- produced a wide array of new publicly available datasets.
All of this is taking place while we also build our technical capacity and policies for keeping your personal data safe and secure.
Now we are calling on you to contribute your ideas. I’m asking if you could take a few moments of your time and provide your thoughts about what HHS agencies, programs, and offices can do to make our next plan our best one ever. Please submit your comments using the link below and we promise to review them. Then, sometime in early September, we’ll publish our draft plan for you to comment on further.
Submit your comments here. Comments will be accepted through August 5, 2016.
Our mission is to build a better, more open government in service to to the public. With your help, we will move closer to advancing that mission.
This article was originally published on HHS Idea Lab and is republished here with permission.