President Obama‘s 2009 promise of “the most transparent administration in history” often draws skeptical comments, especially among journalists, but a new program at the General Services Administration may change things for the better.
18F is described by GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini as “the government’s digital incubator” for new approaches to making departments and agencies more transparent.
The group’s name refers to GSA’s headquarter location at 18th and F streets in the nation’s capital. The group consists of 15 digital designers, programmers and product experts who also work as members of the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows.
Among the group’s first projects “is working to create a clean, user-friendly online FOIA hub to submit requests to the federal government,” according to C.J. Ciaramella, editor of FOIA Rundown.
Ciaramella covers transparency and whistle blower issues in the federal government for Washington Free Beacon and edits FOIA Rundown as a weekly email newsletter.
Six members of the 18F team are working with a task force of FOIA officials from across the government to develop new digital products for federal web sites that in conjunction with the new hub would:
* Improve the FOIA request submission experience.
* Create a scalable infrastructure for making requests to federal agencies.
* Make it easier for requesters to find records and other information that have already been made available online.
Technology analyst and writer Alex Howard lauded the 18F effort, saying “given how poor some of the ‘FOIA portals’ and underlying software that supports them exists at all level of government, this is tremendous news for anyone that cares about the use of technology to support open government.”
Howard added that “this is a perfect example of ‘lean government,’ or the application of lean startup principles and agile development to the creation of citizen-centric services in the public sector.”
Howard also praised 18F for “demonstrating its commitment to developing free and open source software in the open” by urging taxpayers “to follow the process online at their FOIA software repository on Github, send them feedback or even contribute to the project.”
Howard’s comments appeared on his blog, E Pluribus Unum, which is widely read in the digital transparency community.
The group is currently demonstrating a prototype version of the FOIA hub, as it would function on a smart phone.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
