Obama Announces Open Data Policy With Executive Order

In an overdue but welcome move, President Obama today issued an executive order mandating "open and machine-readable data" for government-published information. Also, kodiaktau writes "In a move to make data more readily available, the United States of America has announced the Project Open Data and has chosen GitHub to host the content." Ars has a great article on the announced policy, but as you might expect, it comes with caveats, exceptions, sub-goals and committees; don't expect too much change per day, or assume you have a right to open data, exactly, in the eyes of the government, but — "subject to appropriations" — it sounds good on paper. (I'd like the next step to be requiring that all file formats used by the government be open source.)

Comments

Re:Only right use of an Executive Order I've seen

[msauve]

It's not just Obama. There's a rich history of Presidents using EOs to try and get out of their duty to execute the law. It's been a bipartisan dereliction of duty (and illegitimate power grab).

But yes, you're right in that this sounds like a legitimate use - ordering an execution of the law which makes it more accessible.

Re:Only right use of an Executive Order I've seen

[girlintraining]

It is my understanding that Executive Orders have to do with the internal operations of the government, not as a mechanism of usurping congress when it comes to laws that have an effect on the American public.

People seem to forget Executive Order 9066, which led to the creation of internment camps for "Japanese-americans" (or as I call them, citizens) during WWII. There's a great many more examples of executive orders going far beyond "internal operations of the government." And yes, Obama, like every other president has penned some questionable executive orders.

Of course, even snarking the President on slashdot is a hanging offense, so god help me for suggesting this; But it's clear that every administration. Every. Administration. Has used executive orders to expand the power of the executive branch, or as you put it "usurping congress". Whether this is a problem or not depends largely on your personal political preferences and which party controls the white house at the moment... but historically, they have a long tradition of going far beyond "internal operations of the government"... at least as I suspect you're thinking of it.