From Tech President: The White House is seeking online participation after the State of the union tomorrow, encouraging people to submit questions at YouTube.com/CitizenTube. The President will answer questions online next week – more information at the White House blog.

In other technology news from the White House, the White House iPhone app has been launched with news, photos, and most notably live video feeds (including the State of the Union) – press secretary Robert Gibbs demonstrates. If you aren’t an iPhone user, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov but it is in the works.

According to the OpenGovBlog, 26 agencies failed to meet the first deadline for publishing three high value data sets.

OpenGovBlog’s analysis reveals that several data sets do not meet the standards set by the Open Government Directive that they be “not previously available online or in a downloadable format” and published online in an “an open format.”

Read more.

The FCC is asking the public to share ideas and thoughts about the future of the news media in the United States and what can be done to strengthen it.

One Uservoice discussion asks what government policies could improve the news and information media. Another asks how media companies should change their approach to delivering news and information. The public can also share stories about how media is working in their communitites.

Posting is still pretty light on this important topic.

NextGov recently reported on remarks made by David McClure, the associate administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications at the GSA, and Carolyn Lukensmeyer, the President and Founder of AmericaSpeaks, about the future of Open Government.

“The greatest mistake federal agencies can make with broad citizen engagement, McClure said, is to invite mass participation, but not act on the feedback. The key to successfully implementing open government lies in how agencies sort, rank, filter and discuss feedback while keeping the public in the information loop, he said, emphasizing that managers, executives and agencies have to be plugged in to this process.

“This is not something you turn over to an IT person or policy analyst and you say, ‘Good luck, have fun for the next three weeks sorting through this stuff, let me know what you find out.’ This is actively trying things in collaboration,” said McClure.

“The government also should think about how it casts its net when it comes to greater transparency, said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, president and founder of AmericaSpeaks, a nonpartisan group advocating for public participation in civic life. “As a federal government, most of our agencies are today watched by stakeholders — not by the general interest public — so if we wanted to bring these information technologies options for…real input, we have got to think about the outreach process that gets us beyond sophisticated Beltway and around the country of stakeholders.”

The Guardian just launched a “gateway” for data being released by governments around the world. From the Guardian:

“Governments around the world are opening up their data vaults. Now you can search all of them, from one place.”

Meanwhile, the Sunlight Foundation has launched a National Data Catalog to enable people to rate and evaluate data from Data.gov:

“The National Data Catalog (NatDatCat) is an open platform for government data sets and APIs. NatDatCat makes it easy to find datasets by and about government, across all levels (federal, state, and local) and across all branches (executive, legislative, and judicial). The data here is imported from several sources and curated by our staff. Currently, we have importers setup for Data.Gov and the DC Data Catalog.”

ProPublica, the independent non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, has produced a Transparency tracker and a series of charts to the track the progress of the Open Government Directive. Great to see that they are paying attention.

Check it out.

Transparency advocate Steven Buckley just emailed that he will be hosting Open Government radio on Tuesday, Jan 26 at 2 p.m. EST.
Here’s the show’s description:

The first deadline for federal agencies to comply with the Open Government Directive was last Friday, January 22, 2010 (i.e., “high-value datasets”). How did they do? Let’s talk about it.

Also, the next OGD deadline is February 6, 2010 for each agency to set up its own “OpenGov” webpage. Some have already done it. What do you think of them? What could make them better?

And, now, each federal agency has a “New Media Director”.  But what is that role, exactly, with respect to their agency’s “OpenGov Planning Team”?  And, who IS in charge?  We’ll be discussing these topics, along with the ones that YOU want to talk about.

The Sunlight Foundation has launched a process to assess the data sets that are being released by federal agencies in response to the Open Government Directive.

Here is what they published about their approach to the assessment:

“After struggling with a methodology, we decided that we will not try to quantify our analysis. We had considered giving grades across various categories, but came to the conclusion that the various categories we’re looking at are too disparate to yield meaningful results. For example, would a series of unsearchable, hard-to-read .tiff files of a modern equivalent of the Pentagon Papers get a higher or lower grade than a machine readable database of the Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid? One can’t be searched or number-crunched, but might yield valuable information to the public about a matter of national importance.”

“We felt it was better to remain relatively value neutral, and just describe what we find. We will, however, count how many of the data sets were previously unavailable, or available only with a FOIA, or available only after paying a fee, versus those that had been long available. We’re reporters–we want stuff we haven’t seen before, or could only see after jumping through hoops. So we will rate agencies on the basis of the data they release.”

Today was the first deadline set by the Open Government Directive on which agency’s were required to post three high-value data sets at Data.gov.

Take a look at the growing list — plenty of analysis to come.

Tim Bonnemann just published an article in Federal Computer Week about the limits of crowd sourcing and the additional value that more traditional public participation can offer to integrate viewpoints, co-create policy, and influence decision making.

He writes:

“It’s tempting to look at successful examples of crowdsourcing and suggest that the same principles be applied to government decision-making and policy creation. However, what proponents of that idea tend to miss are the specific process requirements inherent in public participation.”

He continues: “That is not to say that crowdsourcing doesn’t provide great opportunities to engage people in the policy-making process, especially when it comes to tasks and activities that share the proper characteristics — for example, idea generation, fact checking and translations.’

“But when it comes to integrating multiple viewpoints, co-creating policy and, ultimately, decision-making, any successful process must adhere to the tried-and-tested principles of public participation, mainly — among others — inclusion and collaboration.”

There is more to public participation than crowdsourcing alone can deliver.”