Government transparency and open government are still buzzwords, but now that federal agencies' open government plans have been drafted, concept is shifting into execution.

The Gov 2.0 Summit, to be held September 7 and 8 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D. C., will emphasize how open government is evolving from a conversation about releasing data to one about innovation. The theme, "Opening the Door to Innovation," builds on last year's "Government as a Platform" mantra to focus on how technology and open data can be used to push the envelope inside government.

"Open data is the base of an innovation economy; startups are starting to form out of this open data," said Laurel Ruma, Gov 2.0 evangelist at O'Reilly Media, which is co-producing the event with UBM TechWeb, InformationWeek's parent company. "And with budget crunches at state and local levels, governments are having to do more with less. That's why this event is all about the big ideas, the great challenges we're involved in."

The event follows up on last year's sold-out Gov 2.0 Summit. Unlike the Gov 2.0 Expo held earlier this year, which had break-out sessions on the practical side of open government, the all-plenary Gov 2.0 Summit will focus on brainstorming about the next phases of open government and government innovation.

The discussion will range from technologies such as cloud computing and applications built using government data to the risks and rewards of innovating and lessons learned from the private sector, like how to save money while innovating, Ruma said.

The summit will also spotlight private sector and non-government innovators, especially those drawing their success from working with governments or government data. Among the speakers will be Ushahdi co-founder Ory Okolloh, whose interactive Web mapping platform has been used to track crises from Kenya to Haiti to the Gulf Coast. "The two points of open gov that really matter are saving money and saving lives, and this really does both," Ruma said.

Other speakers on Gov 2.0 Summit's agenda include Department of Health and Human Services CTO Todd Park, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, and VMware CTO Steve Herrod.

You can get more information and request an invitation to the Gov 2.0 Summit, by clicking here and filling in the form. Additional info on the Gov 2.0 Summit is here.

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