STATUS REPORT
help agencies develop ways to make their compliance and enforcement information searchable across agencies.
The Regulatory Compliance Memorandum will therefore lead to greater transparency of regulatory agencies' compliance and enforcement records. Such transparency will promote greater government accountability, as the agencies with weak compliance and enforcement records will be more readily revealed. At the same time, greater disclosure of regulatory compliance and enforcement information will also provide more accountability of chronic bad actors who fail to comply with the law, especially across multiple regulatory areas. This in turn will help level the playing field among regulated entities, and provide citizens with information they need to make more informed decisions. All of these consequences constitute express purposes of the Regulatory Compliance Memorandum.
Given its breadth, implementation of the Regulatory Compliance Memorandum will require sustained commitment by regulatory agencies over the next months and years. Agencies have developed preliminary draft implementation plans, and during 2011 will finalize their implementation plans and begin to make new regulatory compliance and enforcement information publically available. In fact, many agencies have already begun to make their compliance and enforcement activities accessible to the public. The Regulatory Compliance Memorandum will require all executive branch regulatory agencies to do so, and to expand the information they already provide, in increasingly searchable ways.
International Open Government Partnership
President Obama's emphasis on open government has proven contagious. For example, the President's trip to India in 2010 resulted in a US-India Open Government Dialogue. Australia, Canada, Estonia, New Zealand, and Norway have built directly on Data.gov by launching similar government websites. The United Kingdom announced a new open government initiative that draws heavily from the Administration's efforts over the past two years. Other governments have also borrowed from those efforts. Emerging economies have also shown strong initiative as well, including Brazil's dedication to anti-corruption reforms, South Africa's efforts to provide greater fiscal and budgetary transparency, and Indonesia's initiatives to promote citizen engagement.
Over the next two years, the Administration will take affirmative steps to promote open government around the world, not only by example but also through engagement with governments that have indicated interest in strengthening accountability and transparency. As the President stated in his speech before the United Nations in September of 2010:
- The common thread of progress is the principle that government is accountable to its citizens. . . . In all parts of the world, we see the promise of innovation to make government more open and accountable. . . . . We must build on that progress. And when we gather back here next year, we should bring specific commitments to promote transparency; to fight corruption; to energize civic engagement; to leverage new technologies so that we strengthen the foundations of freedom in our own countries, while living up to the ideals that can light the world.
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