April 7th, 2010 was Open Government Day in the United States. Many of the key requirements of the Open Government Directive issued by the Obama administration came due. A year later, the people charged with carrying out the plans, policies and projects that came out of that directive are starting to deliver upon some of the digital initiatives. NASA just held its first open source summit. FCC.gov relaunched as an open government platform.
There’s much more going on in the open government movement than new federal websites or revamped software policy, however, than most citizens or even other government workers and officials may realize.

According to the list of federal open government projects compiled by Angie Newell during her doctoral dissertation, there are currently 358 federal open government projects. Y

As Andy Kryzmarzik explained this morning in a post on Govloop, this terrific infographic is the results of a collaboration between Newell, NYC professor Beth Noveck and GOOD. Nancy Scola has aptly called a map of the US open government world. You can explore the graphic below or access a larger version open government infographic as a PDF. If you click on the numbers, you’ll be taken to a subset of projects in the database hosted on Govloop.

Here’s the backstory from Krzmarzick on how the infographic was created:

As serendipity would have it, I met both Beth and Angie Newell at Manor.Govfresh in September, where I learned that Angie was working on a doctoral dissertation and had already completed much of the data collection already…but she couldn’t quite share it yet as she was completing a bit more analysis and adding some additional information. In the meantime, she’s provided some analysis of the project here and here.

Fast forward to a month ago. By now, Beth had departed the White House…and Angie finalized the dataset with all 350+ open government projects. So Beth connected us with the GOOD guys (and I mean that literally – special shout out to Casey Caplowe and Oliver Munday). Our goal was to create a useful visualization that made it easy to find the data and they’re kinda known for their great infographics.

You can browse all of the open government projects in the database below.

This infographic and and database is useful for learning what’s out there in federal open government plans. That said, there’s no clear assessment of the quality of outcomes in that graphic. Understanding what exists, however, is a valuable first step, and I look forward to the analysis of the Govloop community and the larger open government ecosystem as more of these projects are implemented. Not every open government project will result in the creation of a health internet but they’re all important to someone.