DoD Updates Open Government Plan

The Department of Defense has expanded a website outlining its Open Government plan as well as the plan itself, it said Tuesday.

The move is in response to feedback that the agency did not provide a detailed enough version of the plan when it was released in April, according to the agency. On its Open Government website, the DoD has added a "Link Library" to better enable people to find information about its plan to use technology to be more transparent in its activities and engage with U.S. citizens.

The library features links to the DoD's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reading rooms as well as key budget, spending and contract resources, the agency said.

According to an Obama administration deadline, government agencies released their Open Government plans in April, but most were considered in need of improvement.

The revised version of the DoD's plan unveils what the agency is calling an "Express Route" for submissions to the Data.gov repository.

Data.gov is integral to the Obama administration's Open Government Directive. The site provides an online repository aimed at making it easier for the public to find and use government data sets.

According to the agency, new information the DoD has added include: data tables published in PDF or similar format on public-facing websites; almanacs, factbooks and similar sets of statistics; data sets released under the FOIA process; data sets that reflect the same information in DoD press releases; and aggregated material that has been released incrementally through press releases and other DoD sources.

The DoD said it soon will release new data sets on the quality of care in the military health system as well as recruiting data.