NRC PUBLISHES NEW OPEN GOVERNMENT PLAN; 

NOW SEEKING PUBLIC INPUT 

 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission unveiled today its new Open Government Plan, 

which reiterates the agency’s longstanding commitment to openness and outlines plans for new 

transparency, participation and collaboration initiatives. The NRC also re-opened IdeaScale, a 

user-friendly citizen engagement tool originally piloted in February and March. The pilot will 

continue through June, at which time it will be evaluated and the results of the ideas posted 

online. 

 

 “Helping the public to better understand and participate in our regulatory processes 

strengthens our decision making and supports our health, safety and environmental mission,” 

said NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko. “The NRC’s Open Government Plan strengthens our 

communication with the public and builds public confidence through expanded outreach and 

supports the President’s Open Government Initiative.” 

Last December, the Office of Management and Budget directed the heads of executive 

departments and agencies to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and 

collaboration outlined in the President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. 

Although the NRC is not required to comply with the directive, it chose both to participate in 

IdeaScale and to develop an Open Government plan. 

The NRC plan has seven sections: an introduction; a section on leadership, governance, 

and change management; one section each on transparency, participation, and collaboration; a 

section describing the agency’s flagship initiative for open government; and a section describing 

how the NRC has engaged and will continue to engage the public and agency employees to 

achieve continuous improvement of the plan. Specific initiatives outlined in the plan include: 

• Increasing the number of NRC meetings that are Webcast live for public viewing 

and made available in a video archive for viewing after the meeting; 

• Continuing to pilot the use of IdeaScale to increase public engagement and 

cultivate creative ideas to improve NRC actions; 

NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001 

E-mail: opa.resource@nrc.gov

Site: http://www.nrc.gov

No. 10-062 April 7, 2010
• Making a new Web-based Google search tool available for the NRC’s public 

documents in ADAMS; 

• Piloting the use of social networking technology to foster engagement through 

interactive on line dialogues and information exchanges; and 

• Completing the NRC public Web site redesign. 

The NRC also plans to publish a variety of new high-value data sets over the next two 

years, including data associated with event reports and performance indicators for operating 

reactors, generic safety issues, and various types of license applications. 

The NRC invites the public to comment on its Open Government Plan by using the 

IdeaScale public dialogue tool. A specific category has been added for ideas related to the plan. 

The plan, IdeaScale and more information about Open Government can be found at these 

Web addresses: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/open/philosophy/nrc-open-gov-plan.pdf, 

https://opennrc.ideascale.com and http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/open.html. More 

information on the directive in general, can be found here: 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive. 

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