The Cliff Notes Version:
(1) WhiteHouse.gov/TV; (2) Weekly Webcast; (3) GovTube; (4) Put Content on Non-Governmental sites; (5) Create New Media, Transparency, and Technology offices in every executive branch agency; (6) Monthly Department Secretaries webcasts; (7) Webcast the Inauguration; (8) Make the State of the Union an interactive multimedia event; (9) Make the President's Annual Budget a digital, multimedia document; (10) Enact all of this and more first by executive order, then through legislation, so future Administrations can't just hard reboot your digital legacy.

For the full version, read on...

Back in the day, when Yahoo! was the only search game in town, many wondered why Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), and eventually Google would attempt to break into that market. The answer continues to be the same - although they're good, there's still a lot to be done with Search. Contextual search is still being explored, and in terms of government and campaign information, most documents are not publicly or easily available to the search engines. With the goal of open government in mind, I decided to take a look at five relatively new search companies that recently launched sites, hoping that perhaps some of them could help make search of government and campaign data a little better, honing in on the FEC, OMB and more.

The actual contracts used in the implementation of the incoming Obama Administration's massive economic stimulus plan will be available to the public online - that's what Peter Orszag, the nominee for Office of Management and Budget chief, told the Senate government affairs committee today.

New incoming Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag gave every department and agency formal notice on what it needs to do to stay on the good side of Recovery.gov, in the form of a 60-page all-agency memo numbered M-09-10. Recovery.gov might be groundbreaking from the cheap seats, but much of the memo will be familiar reading to its intended audience. In many ways -- from reporting requirements and even data formats demanded -- what Orszag's asking of agencies on Recovery.gov mimics what they're already doing for the federal contracts portal USAspending.gov.

This is going to break some good geeky hearts out there. Sight. Alas, there will not be an Innovation.gov. Word that a spankin' new website with the handsome domain name would serve as the rallying spot for federal open-government initiatives burned up the Twitter wires this weekend. But Beth Noveck tells me it's not true. And she should know, as the law professor is serving as the Administration's point person on crafting the Open Government Directive that President Obama promised on his first full day in office. That might be the bad news. But what will likely strike many of us as good news is that the OGD, as I like to call it, is being crafted via intra-government wiki...

To the suprise of, um, exactly no one, Julius Genachowski was nominated today by President Obama to head the Federal Communications Commission. And word is that DC CTO Vivek Kundra will also finally get his nod as OMB e-government administrator shortly. But Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein has talked to tech advocates and other interested parties who are getting a bit antsy that the White House still has not named someone to the long-promised post of Chief Technology Officer -- despite the fact that, as Stein writes, "Obama has already given the CTO homework." By presidential memorandum, the CTO has until late May to draft an Open Government Directive.

For the time being, it seems that that first CTO assignment has been handed over to law professor Beth Noveck, who has set up temporary shop in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. But don't look for the OSTP website to provide much reassurance that there are sufficient hands on deck: the "Leadership & Staff" page is drop-dead blank. That said, Noveck seems to have a least some support. Federal News Radio's Jason Miller reported mid last month that GSA Interagency Policy and Management Director Michele Heffner is on a three-month detail at OSTP. The concern, though, is that, as Stein quotes the Sunlight Foundation's Ellen Miller as sharing, an eventual CTO won't feel a whole lot of ownership over a open-government agenda he or she didn't have a hand in creating.

In geek quarters, Vivek Kundra's appointment to the new post of Chief Information Officer/e-Government Administrator of the United States is sparking hosannas and cries of joyful anticipation such as you've never heard before. But that's because Kundra's uttering things about government not often spoken by someone with the power to make them happen. O'Reilly's Tim O'Brien has clips and notes from a conference call in which Kundra hops from Facebook-style self-organizing to the Human Genome Project to intra-governmental collaboration via wiki. CNET's Stephanie Condon does a rundown on the appointment (in which the CIO is framed as sort of the alpha CIO responsible for leading the many CIOs scattered across government). And the Sunlight Foundation's Clay Johnson has a quick guide to the tenets of Kundraism: (1) using alternative market models to reduce cost, (2) data driven decisions, and (3) operational data is public data.

The "Leadership" page on the Office and Science and Technology Policy's website is still as blank as a AIG's "Good Stuff That Happened This Year" annual report section (zing!), but Think Progress' Brad Johnson reports that OSTP is indeed starting to staff up. Two veterans of the Clinton Administration will be headed to OSTP to serve as advisors to the Obama White House. The OSTP is expected to be the home base of the eventual CTO, though who that might be is still a mystery.

Here's who's headed to OSTP:

Thomas Kalil will serve as OSTP Associate Director for Policy. Kalil previously served President Clinton as Deputy Assistant for Technology and Economic Policy, as well as in the capacity of Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council. In between his White House gigs, Kalil has served as the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at UC Berkeley (where he ran the Big Ideas @ Berkeley program), as an industry consultant, and as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. [Kalil's LittleSis profile]

And Jim Kohlenberger will serve as OSTP Chief of Staff. Kohlenberger served as senior domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore and hand a hand in the creation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In between White House stints, Kohlenberger has worked as executive director of the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition and as a senior fellow at the Benton Foundation. [Kohlenberger's LittleSis profile]

Staffing headaches for the administration are adding a bit of a wrinkle to the Open Government Directive that Obama put in an order for on his first full day in office. Obama called for a government-wide operating plan on transparency, participation, and collaboration to be issued in 120 days. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that date creep hit a government project, but as it's written that's May 21. It's a fairly tight schedule, and even more so when there aren't all that many hands on desk. The "Chief Technology Officer" was given by Obama the lead in writing the directive. Of course, she or he has yet to be named, and talk has even died down considerably over possible candidates. Speculation is that the eventual CTO will be housed in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Obama's pick for OSTP director, John Holdren, has seen his nomination held up over some Senate bickering. There's some forward-moving news on that front, though. Holdren's nomination passed out of committee yesterday, and looks headed for confirmation on the Senate floor. Ultimate issuance of the directive is meant to come from OMB. As OMB e-government administrator, Vivek Kundra will likely have a hand in crafting the order -- but he's gone on leave in light of a procurement investigation in his old DC CTO office.

Headaches, no doubt. But the slack has been picked up, at seems, by Beth Noveck, who has been working from inside OSTP to reach out to advocates and stakeholders inside and outside government to get a working draft together.

Two months and 14 days, roughly, into the Obama Administration, and a U.S. Chief Technology Officer -- one of the promises made by candidate Obama during the campaign that piqued the interest of many techies -- has yet to be named. But the Sunlight Foundation's John Wonderlich has stumbled upon a "Dear Colleague" letter from Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) that would lay down some comfortable statutory bedding for the eventual nominee. The Chief Technology Officer Act, writes Connolly, would "provides the CTO with resources that are necessary to complete his/her mission, including the ability to convene hearings, conduct studies, establish advisory panels, and award grants and fellowships." Enshrining the job description into law, says Connolly, would give it a better chance of sticking around in a meaningful way for post-Obama presidential administrations. And it might able help arm him or her for the inevitable Beltway turf wars that would come as a result of the new post. Connolly's CTO act hasn't yet made its way to THOMAS.