White House hosts webchat on eve of open government directive anniversary

Tomorrow, December 8, is the one year anniversary of the White House Open Government Directive, which which required federal agencies to take steps to achieve key milestones in transparency, participation, and collaboration. Today at 2:20 PM EST, the first United States chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, will join OMB chief information officer Vivek Kundra and Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, in a live web chat.

UPDATE: President Obama is holding a press conference on a tax deal at the same time, which will likely supersede the chat. I’ll start liveblogging the White
House open government webchat at Govfresh using CoverItLive when it ends.

Open government officials and the White House have solicited questions through an online form tool at WhiteHouse.gov and through the White House Facebook page. The chat itself will be hosted using the White House Live Facebook app and streamed live online through WhiteHouse.gov/live or, presumably, the White House iPhone app. Watch for whether any three of the White House officials answer questions on Wikileaks and open government.

For context on the White House and the open government movement, review the following pieces:

• 2010 is the year of participatory platforms, featuring an interview with Chopra
• White House deputy CTO Noveck on next steps for open government
• An open government in beta
• Harnessing the civic surplus for open government
• Open government is a mindset
• Data and simplicity can build the government platform
• Open government and “next generation democracy”
• Samantha Power on transparency, national security and open government
• The story of Pillbox at the NIH, where socializing open government healthcare data built a better platform
• Making community health info as useful as weather data
• Crowdsourcing national challenges at Challenge.gov
• Peer-to-Patent, an open government innovation pioneered by White House deputy CTO Beth Noveck
• The launch of the Civic Commons code-sharing initiative
• The progress of bringing open government to courts
• The growth of government 2.0 in Australia and development of open government in Britain