Dec. 11, 2024 — Open Government FAC public meeting #2

The Open Government Federal Advisory Committee will convene virtually via Zoom on Dec. 11. In accordance with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. 1001 et. seq.) the meeting will be open to the public from 1–4 p.m. Eastern time.

Agenda and attendance

Written public comments received

None

Call to order

Arthur Brunson, the Designated Federal Officer (DFO), welcomed attendees to the second public meeting of the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee (OGFAC). The OG FAC operates under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Attendees were reminded that the meeting is public and recorded, with materials posted on the official website. Daniel York serves as the alternate DFO. Committee materials can be found at www.gsa.gov/usopengov. On that page, you select the link for the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee webpage. That page includes a tab for each OG FAC meeting.

Mr. Brunson conducted a roll call prior to the meeting’s start to confirm attendance. Once a quorum was confirmed (see Committee Members Present table above), Mr. Brunson provided an overview of the agenda. 

Committee chair opening remarks

Daniel Schuman, the Committee Chair, introduced the focus of the meeting: the reporting and analysis that came out of the three preparatory meetings and discussions on next steps. The committee would also hear about the NAP 6 timeline and discuss whether it could collaborate through Google Documents. 

Report back from preparatory meetings

Committee structure - presented by Amy Holmes

Amy Holmes summarized discussions on committee structure, including the potential for subcommittees. The group acknowledged the administrative hurdles to formally establish subcommittees and proposed continuing work through preparatory meetings in the interim. Key questions included:

• What subcommittees should exist?
• Whether they should be organized on thematic, topical, functional, or other basis
• Frequency of meetings.
• Examples from other federal advisory committees.
• Flexibility and inclusion of members. Members not on a subcommittee could still participate to ensure broad input.

Three subcommittees were proposed:

1. Retrospective Review of Past NAP Impact: To evaluate the impact of past National Action Plans (NAPs)
2. New NAP Recommendations: To organize and synthesize proposals for upcoming plans.
3. Emerging Open Government Issues: To address emerging issues that may have topical relevance like AI and public engagement, and committee activity need not be tied to the National Action Plan process. .

Committee discussion

• Charles Cutshall supported the retrospective review and the forum for public participation.
• Daniel Schuman suggested that retrospective reviews could include some new NAP recommendations.
• Corinna Turbes raised the issue of decoupling NAP recommendations from the national action plan timeline.
• There was a desire to keep using the preparatory meetings to the extent they are useful. It may take two months or more to establish the subcommittees.
• For a subcommittee, a quorum is a majority of its members. It is difficult to change membership, which requires appointment of the administrator and can be a time consuming process. Even though a member is not serving on a subcommittee that individual will be able to attend the meetings and participate, but not vote.
• If we do not like the committee structure we establish we can always vote to change it, although that too will take time.
• Members agreed to establish subcommittees and clarified the formal appointment process, which requires Administrator approval.

Vote

The committee voted to establish the three subcommittees:

• Ade Oriola: Yes
• Amy Holmes: Yes
• Bobby Black: Yes
• Charles Cutshall: Yes
• Daniel Schuman: Yes
• Joyce Ajayi: Yes
• Kristin Honey: Yes
• Steven Buckley: Yes
• Janice Luong: Yes
• John Dierking: Yes
• Josh Tauberer: Yes
• Kiril Jakimovski: Yes
• Ron Keefover: Yes
• Suzanne Piotrowski: Yes
• Corinna Turbes: Did not vote

The next step is Daniel Schuman will follow up with the help of DFO to survey committee members to express their interest in serving on one or more subcommittees and/or whether they’d like to serve as chair. 

Evaluation - presented by Kiril Jakimovski

The Evaluation group focused on developing a framework for assessing ideas and commitments relevant to Open Government.

Kiril Jakimovski provided a framework for discussion, drawing from the framework used by the Open Government Partnership.

Jakimovski presented evaluation dimensions, including effort, ambition, impact, and feasibility, locus of the work (national, state, local), how to establish accountability, referencing criteria used by OGP. The preparatory meeting also discussed that it could be important to have a more transparent process behind the committee’s decision-making with a defensible methodology without being overly mechanistic. The key overall recommendations:

• Focus on defining the problem, how the recommendation would make things different. 
• It’s okay to set modest goals for ourselves and expectations. 
• Work towards a transparent defendable inclusion criteria?
• Analyze effort versus impact, although there’s plenty of other variables we might want to consider.

The group proposed using tools like quadrant analyses to map ideas against these dimensions.

Committee discussion

• It is worth considering whether and what weights to attach to the various criteria.
• Members supported developing a formal evaluation framework.
• Additional preparatory meetings will be scheduled to refine the methodology.

Vote

The committee voted to authorize Kiril to pull together additional preparatory meetings and report back on whether or how to formalize this process:

• Ade Oriola: Yes
• Amy Holmes: Yes
• Bobby Black: Yes
• Charles Cutshall: Yes
• Corinna Turbes: Did not vote
• Daniel Schuman: Yes
• Joyce Ajayi: Yes
• Kristin Honey: Yes
• Steven Buckley: Yes
• Janice Luong: Yes
• John Dierking: Yes
• Josh Tauberer: Yes
• Kiril Jakimovski: Yes
• Ron Keefover: Yes
• Suzanne Piotrowski: Yes

Engagement - presented by Daniel Schuman

The Engagement preparatory meeting focused on how the OG FAC should engage with the public.  John was tasked with holding the preparatory meeting but could not attend; Daniel managed the meeting.

The weight of the group’s sentiment was as follows:

• Up to 30 minutes per meeting for public comments and 3 minutes per person. (Written comments can always be submitted ogfac@gsa.gov)
• May consider holding a specific meeting focused on public feedback.
• Beyond the means used by GSA, members are encouraged to share meeting announcements on their social media and to encourage the public to submit written/oral comments
• Do not respond individually to each verbal comment made by the public at the time it is made – the best way to show people how the comments are used is in how we formulate our recommendations
• Written comments are acknowledged by GSA – we show how they are used in how we incorporate them in our recommendations
• There’s general support for using tools like IdeaScale and Crowdicity to allow the public to comment and respond to each other’s comments
• The engagement preparatory meeting did not have time to address: (1) how to engage with people who are under-engaged or have issues with engaging? (2) How do people present to the committee? (3) How do we engage with the Open Government Google Group, YouTube comments, live chat comments? (4) How do we support engagement by government officials? (5) How do we encourage public feedback that takes into account the hard choices that need to be made? (6) How to demonstrate that ideas are being taken seriously?

Committee discussion

• Members debated the length of public comments, agreeing on 3 minutes per person but allowing flexibility for extended discourse.
• Discussion of having a separate meeting for discussion with the public.
• Suggestion of making publicly available the criteria we are using to evaluate the ideas.
• Suggestions included organizing a public engagement day and leveraging technology like Ideascale or Crowdicity.
• There was discussion on allowing the public only one minute to comment. There’s limited time and committee members are doing the work; we can’t spend time on things that may not be meaningful if we can’t respond to them.
• The OG FAC is not a multistakeholder forum for the NAP, that’s GSA. Our work includes making recommendations re: the NAP but goes further to address other open government issues. We are an independent advisory committee, not a clearing house.

Vote

The committee voted to adopt 30 minutes of public comments, with 3 minutes per individual, with discretion for the chair to allow for extended comments if there’s time available. :

• Ade Oriola: Yes
• Amy Holmes: Yes
• Bobby Black: Yes
• Charles Cutshall: Yes
• Corinna Turbes: Did not vote
• Daniel Schuman: Yes
• Joyce Ajayi: Yes
• Kristin Honey: Did not vote
• Steven Buckley: Yes
• Janice Luong: Yes
• John Dierking: Yes
• Josh Tauberer: No
• Kiril Jakimovski: Yes
• Ron Keefover: Yes
• Suzanne Piotrowski: Yes

Committee adopted by unanimous consent the following provisions:

• Hold a specific meeting to get public feedback, whether in person or virtual
• Do not respond to individual verbal public comments at the meeting
• Support for exploring using tools like IdeaScale or Crowdicity to get public comments

NAP 6 timeline overview

Alexis Masterson presented the development timeline for the 6th National Action Plan (NAP). Key milestones:

• Public feedback collection through December 2024.
• Drafting phase from January to May 2025.
• Finalization by October-November 2025.

Committee discussion

• Concerns were raised about alignment with the incoming administration. Specifically: that the timeframe for the committee to make recommendations on the NAP – and the NAP process itself – would mean that the U.S. government is making recommendations prior to the seating of new officials in the incoming administration, and thus there would not be an opportunity for robust consultation with the agencies.
• Members debated whether to delay the timeline or proceed as planned, acknowledging challenges with stakeholder engagement during the transition.
• Consensus was reached to proceed with the current timeline while remaining adaptable.

Future presentations

• The committee discussed inviting the GSA U.S. Open Government Secretariat, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders for future presentations.
• Members were encouraged to suggest additional speakers.

Use of Google documents

Schuman proposed using a public Google Document for collaborative drafting, allowing real-time input from committee members while maintaining transparency.

Vote

The committee unanimously endorsed this idea, pending approval from GSA.

Public comments

One individual provided public comments. Stephen Buckley from the U.S. Chapter of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) emphasized improving meeting transparency, enabling asynchronous public engagement, and clarifying decision-making processes. He suggested sharing detailed agendas in advance, using online platforms for continuous dialogue, and making decision-making roles among agencies like GSA and OSTP clearer. Buckley highlighted the importance of modeling transparency to foster public trust and effective participation.

Adjournment

Arthur Brunson adjourned the meeting at 3:58 PM ET. The next meeting is scheduled for January. Members will receive email updates regarding preparatory meetings and future agenda items.

Full list of attendees