OPM's OpenGov Plan

The Office of Personnel Management's open government plan ranked in the top five of all federal agencies creating such plans to improve transparency and collaboration, according to a recent audit by OpenTheGovernment.org.

Results of the audit, released Monday, ranked OPM in fifth place behind NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development departments for having the strongest open government plans of all federal agencies. Other agencies, like the Defense, Energy, Justice and Treasury departments, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, received the lowest rankings.

An Obama administration directive issued Dec. 8 instructed agencies to release a formal plan to improve transparency and collaboration. OPM's plan, issued April 7, includes a leading project called the Flagship Initiative, which involves implementing collaboration and knowledge management technologies such as e-libraries, document management tools, virtual worlds and social networking tools to help build employee knowledge, enable better management of workforce talent and provide sustainable sharing and collaboration.

OPM's plan provides significant detail and pledges to look closely at current efforts and make needed improvements in a reasonable timeframe, OpenTheGovernment noted. But the plan could be improved by the inclusion of a link to the office's efforts to improve participation and would benefit from specific dates and timelines for the actions planned on transparency, participation and collaboration, the audit states.