The page updated is here.

The updates were a combination of suggestions from Scott Horvath and Jeremy Fee at the USGS, Kol Peterson from EPA, and me, and really big thanks go to Scott and Kol for reaching out to others for input on Monday and getting the feedback back to Bev Godwin at GSA who runs webcontent.gov who published the changes only a few days later. Scott also notes that additional suggestions could still be considered (his email address is at the bottom of that page).

In making my suggestions, I turned to the Open Government Data Principles and tried to squeeze in as much as I could without overloading the document, and I drew from ideas that came up in the preparation of the Open House Project report. Some of the changes made were:

• It now provides examples of data as being documents, audio/visual recordings, and databases.
• It now says to support “the widest practical range of public uses of
  the data”. It had formerly suggested supporting the “intended” use of
  the website by visitors.
• It notes the benefit of providing data: “New uses of your agency’s
  data may become a valuable public resource that would be out of the
  scope of your own website, such as helping to keep the public informed
  about the work of your agency and supporting civic education and
  participation.”
• There is a new paragraph that I might be misunderstanding but which
  seems to make a suggestion along the lines of the recent “Invisible
  Hand” paper about the agency’s website getting the data the same way the
  public does: “Providing a uniform method to access raw data can also be
  the first step in internal development, accomplishing both goals at
  once. When a uniform method to access data is available, developers and
  web–services can focus on data presentation.”
• It notes that the availability of bulk downloads of data is something
  to consider when building data access.
• It notes some disadvantages of using proprietary formats.
• It recommends that if a proprietary format is needed, a
  non-proprietary format should be used in addition.
• It adds a benchmark to test for success: “One benchmark for
  determining whether data is made sufficiently available is whether the
  public has all of the data needed to replicate any searching, sorting,
  and display functionality provided on the agency’s own website.”
• It notes that consulting the public in the development of data access
  seems to be entailed from OMB policy: “When choosing data formats and
  distribution methods, keep in mind that your agency’s visitors are the
  best judges of their own needs. Agencies must “establish and maintain
  communications with members of the public and with State and local
  governments to ensure your agency creates information dissemination
  products meeting their respective needs” (OMB Policies for Federal
  Public Websites #4A).”

We have a real success story here.

For all the discussion about what the next administration might look like in 2009, the best place to start is probably to fully understand what’s already being done. Other helpful resources: Karen Evans’ testimony to the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Commitee in December, the e-gov act of 2002 (HR 2458 ), and the e-gov reauthorization (here ).