One-third of agencies pass the Federal Open Technology Report Card

[Renew Deal]

Open Source for America (OSFA) recently published a report card on open technology and open government across several U.S. federal government departments and agencies. The results: One-third of agencies received a passing grade. OSFA, a coalition launched in July 2009 to encourage U.S. federal government support of and participation in open source projects and technologies, worked with government departments and agencies to develop the methodology and rate each group. (According to OSFA, 2010 marked the first year federal government agencies were operating under the Directive and Open Government Plans.)

The 2010 Federal Open Technology Report Card measures 15 federal departments and agencies on their progress against goals supported by the open government directive. The report card measures use of open source technologies, open formats, and technology tools for citizen engagement. Agencies with scores of greater than 50 percent included:

■Department of Defense (82 percent)
■Department of Energy (72 percent)
■Department of Health and Human Services (55 percent)
■Department of Homeland Security (55 percent)
■Department of Transportation (53 percent)

The remaining 10 agencies and departments scored between 49 and 37 percent. Said differently, only one-third of agencies and departments evaluated received a passing grade. Take a look at OSFA's criteria, specifically the open technologies questions, to see if your company would fare better than these 10 agencies and departments.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/only-one-third-agencies-pass-the-federal-open-technology-report-card-418

I think this is kind of a fluff PR piece, but people might find it interesting.

[pokerfan]

1. Now if we could just

a) get NASA to dump Silverlight
b) get Microsoft to open Silverlight

Either one would be cool. What is not cool is a taxpayer funded agency not supporting an open standard.