Topic: *Please help us write the Open Source for America (OSFA) “Guidelines for Open Government Plans.”*


OSFA Members,

For some time now, the OSFA Steering Committee has been considering an OSFA deliverable for 2010: a grading/report card on the various U.S. government agencies and their policies and practices as they relate to open source software and openness more generally. (By openness, we intend the same meaning as the Obama Administration: participation, collaboration, and transparency.)

With the Administration's issuance last month of its Open Government Directive (http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive), we quickly came to an agreement that this is a project that should go forward -- but with a new beginning.

We would first like to issue a set of "Guidelines for Open Government Plans," to help inform the different agencies as they each seek to publish their mandated Open Government Plan by the April 7th due date. We are opening this discussion today; our expectation would be to issue this set of guidelines the second week of February, thus providing the agencies with sufficient time to take them into account.

We have supplied a first draft, which we expect the OSFA community to significantly improve. Our current draft is at http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/guidelines. Your comments and advice are welcome, AND please add them to the mail thread located at the bottom of the page so that we can capture them. And if you have a blog or issue a newsletter, please assist us in promoting this effort. We really would like to see our membership and influence grow.

Following publication of our guidelines, we will then begin work on a set of metrics/questions that we would intend to use to grade the agencies late this spring, following the April 7th launch of their Open Government Plans.

Thank you in advance for your assistance,
OSFA Steering Committee



Go to opensourceforamerica.org/guidelines, log in, and join the discussion thread. 

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