Evolution of Transparency

The full post appears on O'Reilly Radar

With the sea change caused by the Open Government Directive I know that many federal agencies might be struggling with how to actually implement this new policy. This is a major cultural shift in government and there are always challenges when trying to bring such broad changes to any large organization. Government bureaucracy is certainly no exception. But this last week I was encouraged by one agency's office, which has shown a great start-up mentality in not only moving toward government 2.0 principles, but also achieving some pretty significant accomplishments along the way.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) hosts an annual event focused around health IT professionals and health IT vendors (Andy Oram has been covering HIMSS). I was fortunate at this year's HIMSS conference to have conversations with staff from the Office of the National Coordinator. Much of the discussion revolved around the rules for meaningful use of electronic health records, the creation of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), and standards and certification. But of course, I couldn't have access to federal officials without bringing transparency and open government into the conversation.