Yesterday's first public meeting of the Food and Drug Administration's new Transparency Task Force was dedicated to brainstorming ways to make the FDA more accessible, knowable, and accountable, and thus the question came up: What can be done about the agency's notoriously glacial response to Freedom of Information Act requests on drug approvals, food recalls, and medical device oversight? One idea floated was that FDA documents, once published once through official channels, be posted on the FDA website for all the world to use and peruse. If the FDA decides to go that route, there's a new model coming out of a different world -- the news business -- that might help to flesh out what public document sharing might look like in the modern age.

It's called DocumentCloud, and it just received a two-year grant for a considerable $719,500 from the Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge...

Over on the White House blog, U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra and Michael Fitzpatrick from the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Policy (a.k.a. OIRA) plant a bit of a flag in the ground with a post calling out the "existing practices" that conventional wisdom is beginning to eye as potential roadblocks to open and participatory government. The interesting two-sides-of-the-coin here are that the very policies Kundra and Fitzpatrick are calling into question were, at the time they were enacted, intended to make the United States government more open and participatory:

• The 1990 Paperwork Reduction Act. PRA was a good government bill meant to make engaging with government less onerous and open up the democratic process. But its documentation requirements might hamper the government use of wikis, blogs, and the like.
• The 2000 "Federal Cookie Policy." Issued as a OMB memorandum, the policy was meant to protect citizens' privacy, but it can get in the way of using some web 2.0 technologies -- YouTube, for example.
• "Records Management Law." It's not immediately clear (to me, at least) what Kundra and Fitzpatrick are referring to here, but they seem to be interested in making it easier to comply with guidance from the National Archives and Records Administration.
• The 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act. FACA was aimed at regulating the influence 'unofficial' advisors might have on the presidency. Today, it might limit the ability of, say, volunteer programmers to contribute their work to the federal government.

Kundra and Fitzpatrick are asking for your thoughts on whether or how to pursue changing these laws and policies.

Video of this week's TED@State talks has yet to pop up, but TED.com editor Emily McManus has helpfully blogged what the State Department was calling the first ever U.S. government-sponsored TED talks. McManus's summaries are worth a click through if only to see Clay Shirky in a suit, but here's a quick round-up at what the assembled visionaries had to share with the diplomatic class.

Oxford Economist Paul Collier dismissed election-driven intervention into failed states, focusing instead on "jobs, health, clean government." The Acumen Fund's Jacqueline Novogratz told how drip irrigation made its way from large Indian farms to smaller ones through small and patient investment. Futurist Stewart Brand's talk, which McManus seems to rather sensibly avoid turning into soundbite form, focused on the unique meaning of cities. And the aforementioned Shirky, bedecked in black suit, gray shirt, and red tie, talks about a subject near and dear to us -- the transformation in the political landscape that can occur when consumers become creators.

The TED@State talks seem to have been popular. A note on the TED Flickr stream describes "a line out the door" of Dean Acheson Auditorium just to get into the event.

One more quick one from what might be worth calling the "open agency movement": open-access advocate Gavin Baker points out that the National Transportation Safety Board has, as of this week, begun pro-actively posting the results of all of its accident investigations to the NTSB website. The move may seem especially timely with this week's loss of an Air France flight from Brazil, but NTSB says the public notice is part of its work to bring the agency into fuller compliance with the federal Freedom of Information Act.

It starts with the fact that what was a 170-person new media team at the height of the Obama campaign has been condensed down to fewer than a dozen or so government staffers. But the complicating differences between the campaign trail and the White House don't end there, writes Peter Swire,
law professor at Ohio State University and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. During the Obama-Biden transition, Swire served in the role as the attorney responsible for shepherding both Change.gov and the new WhiteHouse.gov safely through the creation process.

In a new CAP briefing memo released yesterday, Swire focuses on three areas that in which shape a context for the White House's web 2.0 efforts different than the one faced by the campaign: scale, clearance, and authorizing outside action.

Scale, says Swire, is informed by the reality that whereas the universe of the audience for the Obama campaign's online efforts was maybe a dozen million committed supporters, President Obama is responsible for engaging with some 300 million Americans -- many of whom didn't vote for him. With so few staffers, the challenge becomes setting up systems that help moderate the influx of input, like Open for Questions or the ongoing Open Government Initiative. But those systems quirks and shortcomings, of course, can raise new problems when the stakes are at the presidential level.

Clearance has to do with something mentioned earlier today on the blog in the context of the State Department's "21st century statecraft efforts." It can be challenging, says Swire, for employees working online to get solid, cleared information from others in the government -- particularly when those sources are busy otherwise working on the substance of the problem at hand. That reality is tied back to the fact that while communications is one of perhaps three main prongs of the campaign (the others, arguably, fundraising and field work), it is a smaller portion of what a White House must do each day.

Authorizing the actions of others outside government, writes Swire, can prove challenging because of the gray areas surrounding how non-government employees can participate in government work. Case in point: the lack of clarity over whether the Federal Advisory Committee Act governs how outside programmers might be able to code on the government's behalf.

Swire has authored two complementary reports that dive deeper into the weeds on government 2.0:

• How to Buy Free Software: Procuring Web 2.0 Technology for the Federal Government
• Six New Media Challenges: Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology.

Swire's full "It's Not the Campaign Anymore" report is available here. But if you'd rather listen than read, Science Progress's Andrew Plemmons Pratt has as 23-minute audio interview with Swire. And if even that takes up too much of your time, the 5-minute video above captures the kernel of Swire's work on the topic.

The Obama Administration has invited bloggers from the Consumerist, the popular Consumers Union-affiliated blog, to come to the White House this week to interview economic advisor Austan Goolsbee on the credit card reform the president has been leaning hard on of late. What's more, Consumerist bloggers Meghann Marco and Ben Popken are asking their readers what questions they should put to Goolsbee. If all goes well, this could be the first of more blogger trips to the White House. Details here. (Photo credit: The Consumerist/afagen)

The White House Office of Public Liaison, the White House announced today, is being renamed to better capture the hope of the Obama Administration that the office will be the point of contact for American citizens as they interact with the executive branch. Presenting the White House Office of Public Engagement.

The White House released the names of a staff of 20 aides who, under the direction of Valerie Jarrett, Christina Tchen, and Michael Strautmanis, will staff a newly wired OPE that aims to reach beyond official Washington. (The celebrity implications are unavoidable; the list of OPE staffers notably doesn't include Kal Penn, who was said to be leaving the TV show "House" to serve in the liaison's office.) From the White House press release:

OPE will help build relationships with Americans by increasing their meaningful engagement with the federal government. Serving as the front door to the White House, OPE will allow ordinary Americans to offer their stories and ideas regarding issues that concern them and share their views on important topics such as health care, energy and education.

In addition to its traditional White House operations, OPE will now also focus on getting information from the American people outside the Washington beltway through special public events as well as activities on the web site. The office will have a strong on-line presence, including blog postings from OPE staff and other interactive elements.

As one of the new OPE's first official acts, they released the Citizen's Briefing Book, a collaborative document compiled online during the presidential transition. The top ideas seem to be ported as written from Change.gov into the 32-page pdf document. The top item in the technology section, for example, is the suggestion that President Obama "Boost America’s Economy with Legal Online Poker."

If you can believe it, we have today's second entry in the topic category of 'really obscure legislative vehicles with potentially huge technological impact that would enshrine into law what it is the rest of us are talking about anyway.' I'm on the hunt for a third. (See below for the first on this theme.) The deal is that Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner has introduced legislation that would amend the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act's sections on the $700 billion TARP program in the hopes of creating greater transparency. The bill would tweak the original text to create a mandatory online database of reported financial data, accessible to "the TARP Inspector General, the Congressional Oversight Panel, and the public." That's us! Here's the pitch:

The TARP Transparency Act will allow regulators and Congress to use a single database, in a standardized format, to provide a more complete picture of the actions of TARP fund recipients and contractors. The information could be collected and disseminated in near real-time, enhancing its value as a regulatory audit tool and also as a preventative oversight tool.

Warner is joined by odd-couple co-sponsors Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in backing the bill, the full text of which is after the jump.

I briefly noted in our cache clearing yesterday that GovLoop -- the social network for government employees and those that love them -- reached the 10,000 member mark in just under a year. As an extracurricular project of one dude looking for a hobby, that's not entirely unimpressive. (More details on Steve Ressler's story here, from Micah back in January.) A few notes on why it's also important, even though that number represents 1/50th of Rainn Wilson's Twitter followers.

It's a cliche to say that government tends to exists in silos. It also has the benefit of being true. But it's incredibly short-sighted of us. People working in, say, human resources at USDA are going to have more in common with HR folks at DHS than they might have with staff scientists in their own agency. Or you may be really into open source, while everyone else in your department looks at you like you're crazy when you bring it up in the cafeteria -- again. There's even a GovLoop group solely for the small band of government photographers which, when you think about it, is pretty cool. Networking can make government service a little less lonely. Considering the sometimes meager pay and ever-present fluorescent lighting public service entails, human connections can take on a greater importance there than they do in the private sector.

Consider joining up. Someday you'll be able to say that you were a member of GovLoop way back when. (Photo credit: kristinpia)

Our membership cards in the Association of Online Writers require that we put together our own version of the ubiquitous "100 Days" pieces you've no doubt seen many of today. In truth, though, when it comes to where technology stands at this early point in the Obama Administration, it's actually a useful exercise. When it comes to tech, it's tempting to get caught up in the daily swirl of what's hot and what's not. But wiring a presidency -- and a country -- takes time.

And a 100 days recap on how how far Obama has come when it comes to technology is particularly worthwhile because, taken alone, every new tech development, from every new agency blog to presidential YouTube address to policy tweak can seem less meaningful than they really are. Considered in the aggregate, though, the first 100 days of the Obama Administration has, it's fair to say, marked a sea change in how Washington DC and the federal government thinks about technology. Under the first 100 days of the Obama Administration, technology has taken on a historic primacy. How citizens can engage in their democracy is discussed at the highest levels of government. How technology can revolutionize America's future is a regular subject of debate. That's a marked change, and one worth marking.

Now, when the Obama Administration started, many of us on the outside kept at least one eye on what happened to the remnants of the innovative Obama campaign. Organizing for America, as its now known, is off to a slow start. But they recently commemorated the first 100 days themselves by releasing a state-by-state map of progress thus far. Tellingly, they called it "Foundation for Change." That seems about right. The first 100 days of the Obama Administration was spent laying the foundation for technological change. What will be built on top of that foundation, we won't know for some time to come.

That said, let's recap what's happened since Inauguration Day.