Today, OpenTheGovernment.org released a report of experts who evaluated how well the Obama administration has met its commitments to the Open Government Partnership in its second National Action Plan for Open Government. As you can see in the chart above, the researchers found only one commitment is fully met. Others, not so much.

The possible explanations for why government agencies were unable to complete the initiatives varied across the evaluations. For example, the evaluation on the commitment to “Modernize the Freedom of  Information Act,” attributed the limited progress on this commitment to the lack of a strong mandate, absence of political will, and need for greater leadership. The evaluation of the commitment on transparency for legal entities noted “corporate opposition” as an apparent roadblock to that potentially transformative commitment. On the commitment to increase transparency of foreign intelligence surveillance activities, the lack of progress was discussed as possibly being a result of the complex challenges stemming from a deeply engrained culture of secrecy.

The lack of benchmarks and specific language is another commonly noted problem that emerges from this report. OGP guidance notes that governments should develop specific commitments and, where commitments have multiple sub-commitments, they should be broken into “clear, measurable milestones.” While the Civil Society Model Plan for the NAP 2 included detailed benchmarks and timelines for achieving measurable sub-commitments, these are generally not included in the U.S. NAPs.