An Increase in Data Opportunities under NAP5

Last week, the Biden Administration released the Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan (NAP5). Historically, such plans have outlined the federal government’s commitment to transparency and collaboration based on a set of identified principles.

NAP5 covers themes ranging from ensuring public access to federal data, to supporting the integrity of federal programs, and according to the plan’s introduction, “Reflects the United States’ longstanding commitment to open government at home and abroad, and includes over 30 commitments from across the Federal Government…”

The plan identifies five key themes, with the advancement of equity and inclusion for underserved communities at the forefront of each of these themes:

• Improve Access to Government Data, Research, and Information
• Increase Civic Space to Engage the Public
• Transform Government Service Delivery
• Counter Corruption and Ensure Government Integrity and Accountability to the Public
• Ensure Equal Justice Under the Law

While contractor implications are present throughout the plan, I’d like to focus on the first theme more than the others.

The transparency of government data, the plan explains, leads to increases in equitable results, evidence-based building, private sector decision-making inclusions, and accelerated breakthroughs in innovation. As a result, the federal commitments outlined under the Improve Access to Government Data, Research, and Information theme result in the government’s need for additional data science expertise, data tools and platforms to ensure information accessibility and equity, and new opportunities out of agencies to make data available, searchable and recognizable. Specifically, government commitments under the first theme of the plan include:

• Expand government production and use of equitable data by leveraging underused data via interagency sharing and providing the tools necessary to visualize government data and assess progress
• Revise federal standards in collecting and reporting race and ethnicity
• Publish agency requests for Made in America Waivers in federal procurements
• Ensure publications from federally funded research entities are free and publicly available without delay
• Streamline research access to confidential federal data
• Expand access to National Archives, including NARA’s commitment to upgrade the Catalog in the next two years with a new website, search functionality, and expanded user contribution types
• Set government-wide federal sustainability goals and establish agency plans, targets and reporting
• Build public tools and data to enhance environmental justice, including a new public Environmental Justice scorecard to track federal progress

Elements under the other themes worth mentioning include federal commitment in FY 2023 to continue using open innovation techniques and crowdsourcing to successfully engage the public in federal procurement policymaking.

Moreover, the plan describes plans between agencies and OMB to standardize procurement information included in agency forecasts of contracting opportunities. In addition to standardizing forecast opportunities, OMB and federal agencies are working through plans to update forecasts on a rolling basis as the requirement are formed and create a centralized platform to easily locate individual forecasts. The plan states that the administration aims to implement these initiatives over the next two years.