Open Government Plan

U.S. Department of Education

April 7, 2010
Open Government Plan

US Department of Education
Open Government Plan

US Department of Education

i

Document History

Description Author Version Date

Initial draft Open Government WG Team

 Joseph Rose

 Kirk Winters

 Ross Santy

 Jason Hoekstra

 Cathy Sullivan

 Bucky Methfessel

1.0 March 6, 2010

Revised document structure Open Government WG Team

 Joseph Rose

 Kirk Winters

 Ross Santy

 Jason Hoekstra

 Cathy Sullivan

 Bucky Methfessel

1.1 March 15, 2010

Reviewed document structure Open Government WG Team

 Joseph Rose

 Kirk Winters

 Ross Santy

 Jason Hoekstra

 Cathy Sullivan

 Ken Moore

1.1 March 17, 2010

Second Draft Open Government WG Team

 Joseph Rose

 Kirk Winters

 Ross Santy

 Jason Hoekstra

 Cathy Sullivan

 Ken Moore

1.2 March 18, 2010

Third Draft Revised Structure and Draft

• Joe Rose

• Jason Hoekstra

1.3 March 21, 2010

Fourth Draft Revised Content 

• Joe Rose

• Jason Hoekstra

1.4 March 28, 2010

Near final Draft Revised Content ,

 added conclusion,

reorganized sections

• Bucky Methfessel

• Ken Moore

• Joe Rose

1.5 March 31, 2010

Final Draft Revised Content

• Joe Rose

1.6 April 1, 2010
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Final to Clearance Revisions

• Joe Rose

• John McGrath

1.7 April 4, 2010

Final First Release 1.8 April 7, 2010

Correction Educational Material

Correction

• Joe Rose

1.8.1 April 23, 2010
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Message from Deputy Secretary Miller

April 7, 2010

President Obama is committed to open government, citizen participation and 

collaboration. On his first day in office, he sent a memo directing all Federal 

agencies to be transparent. The team at the U.S. Department of Education 

(ED) took it to heart.

We posted on the Web names of political appointees who would be working 

at ED. We encouraged ED employees to offer their ideas on how to make our 

work more effective and efficient. We created unprecedented transparency 

as we administered the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We 

posted all the applications we received from states under the Recovery Act’s

State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, as well as detailed reports on jobs saved.

For Race to the Top, the state education reform program, we provided a 

detailed description of the process we would use to review and select Race 

to the Top winners. We posted reviewers’ scores and comments, so that 

everyone could see and learn from reviewers’ work. 

A year ago, as we began preparing for the reauthorization of the Elementary 

and Secondary Education Act, members of the senior staff and the Secretary

visited all 50 states on a listening and learning tour to hear Americans’ ideas 

about No Child Left Behind and education reform. We invited people to

share their ideas also on the Web. 

In March, we issued our draft National Education Technology Plan on the 

Department’s Web site. We invited people to share their comments, videos, 

and examples of how technology is changing and improving education.

To help spur innovation, our Investing in Innovation team created an 

innovation portal — a Web site where education innovators can share ideas 

and collaborate, where funders and educators can point out needs, where 

people can gather to propose, develop, fund, implement, and improve 

education solutions in and outside of the classroom.

These are just a few of the ways the Education Department is committed to 

open government. 

We have plans to extend transparency to other areas.
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Our goal is to make transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration 

with partners “the way we do things” across ED programs and throughout 

our organization.

Right now, by releasing more data than ever before, we are supplying 

parents and students with vital information to empower them to make the 

best decisions about their education. We invite teachers, administrators, 

local and state officials, parents and students to participate in our decisionmaking and hold us accountable. When we collaborate with the American 

people, we increase opportunities to identify novel and imaginative ways 

to meet the President’s goal that the United States once again will lead the 

world in college completion by 2020.

We will be shining a light on data and information that show where we are 

as a nation and what we must do to reach the President’s goal. We will be 

encouraging states, communities, and schools to do likewise, so that all 

education stakeholders — educators, parents, students, and citizens — have 

the information they need to make good decisions for children.

We look forward to hearing from you and from all others who have a stake in 

education about what we can do to improve this plan.

Anthony W. Miller
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Table&of&Contents

I. Executive Summary........................................................................7

II. Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration in Programs..............13

A. Race to the Top – Game Changing Reforms.................................13

B. Race to the Top Assessment......................................................16

C. The Listening and Learning Tour — Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act (ESEA) Reauthorization................................................17

D. Investing in Innovation (i3).......................................................18

E. Draft National Education Technology Plan ...................................20

F. Financial Transparency of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 

(ARRA) ..........................................................................................21

G. Federal Student Aid (FSA) College.gov........................................23

III. Strategic Action Plan for Transparency ..........................................25

A. Flagship Initiative ....................................................................25

B. Timely publishing of Electronic Data ...........................................30

1. Data.gov..............................................................................30

2. eRulemaking ........................................................................33

3. IT Dashboard .......................................................................34

4. Recovery.gov .......................................................................35

5. USASpending.gov .................................................................37

6. EDFacts ...............................................................................39

7. Federal Student Aid (FSA) Data Center ....................................39

8. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).........................40

C. Participation and Collaboration Communities ...............................42

1. Public Participation at ED.gov .................................................43

2. Encouraging Office Participation at ED.gov................................44

3. OpenEducation.IdeaScale.com ................................................45

4. Open Innovation Web Portal ...................................................45

5. Employee Participation through OpenED...................................45

D. Improving Internal Processes ....................................................48
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1. Public Notifications ................................................................48

2. Records Management for National Archiving..............................50

3. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Administration.....................51

4. Congressional Requests for Information ...................................57

IV. ED Roadmap for Incorporating Principles of Openness into Core Agency 

Missions ...........................................................................................58

V. CONCLUSION ..............................................................................67
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I. Executive&Summary

The U.S. Department of Education considers Open Government to be a 

critical component in achieving the Administration’s ambitious education 

goals, which are:

• The U.S. is to become No. 1 in the world in the percentage of the 

population with a college degree by 2020; and

• The U.S. is to significantly reduce gaps between low-income and minority 

students and their peers in high school graduation and college 

access/success by 2020.

Open Government practices became a priority at the Department of 

Education last year with the confirmation of Secretary Arne Duncan on 

January 20 and the issuance of the President’s Open Government directive,

titled Transparency and Open Government, on January 21. Together, these 

events marked a sea change in the Department’s approach to transparency, 

citizen participation, and collaboration. These objectives of Open 

Government permeated all Department activities during the first year of the 

Administration and serve as the foundation for this plan. Examples of these 

key Department activities include the following: 

• Financial Transparency of ED programs funded under the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed into law the American 

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act or ARRA). As of 

March 31, 2010, over $75 billion in ED Recovery Act funds have been 

awarded. This has placed an enormous responsibility on the

Department to ensure not only that we are transparent with our

accounting of these funds, but also that the states receiving these 

grants account accurately and fully to the American 

people.(Department of Education Information Related to the Economic 

Recovery Act of 2009) The Department has responded to this 

responsibility by greatly improving transparency and accountability 

regarding state financial management of the Department’s funding.

• Listening and Learning Tour

In May 2009, Secretary Arne Duncan launched his “Listening and 

Learning Tour” (Education Secretary Launches National Discussion on 

Education Reform ) to engage the public directly in discussing

education reform with America. This nearly yearlong dialog by the 
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Secretary and senior staff in town hall meetings across America has 

resulted in the comprehensive Blueprint for Reauthorizing the 

Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (A Blueprint for Reform: 

The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ).

• Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Programs

Both the Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation (i3) programs 

are funded under the Recovery Act. These two competitive grant 

programs support this Administration’s belief that the best ideas do 

not have to come from Washington, but that Washington can help to 

support the best ideas. Race to the Top provides incentives to States 

to implement large-scale, system-changing reforms that improve 

student achievement, close achievement gaps, and increase 

graduation and college enrollment rates. It has demonstrated 

unprecedented transparency for a grant competition, posting all

applications as well as peer reviewer scores and comments for all to 

see.

The i3 program will provide support to develop path-breaking new 

ideas, validate approaches that have demonstrated promise, and 

scale-up of our nation’s most successful and proven education 

innovations. To further support innovation, the Office of Innovation 

and Improvement has launched the Open Innovation Portal, a public 

forum for all who wish to participate in creating opportunities for 

partnership and local private and public funding. This web portal 

connects grant applicants, stakeholders, funders and other participants 

to cultivate innovative ideas related to education. 

College.gov

College.gov (college, education, financial aid info - college.gov) is a 

community site sponsored by the Department’s Office of Federal 

Student Aid (FSA). The site is maintained for students, their families, 

teachers and counselors. It is a gateway to resources ranging from 

student aid applications to career counseling and many things in 

between. This model connects with stakeholders in social communities

and will leverage social media capabilities to support both temporary 

workgroups and permanent social groups, e.g. teachers.

• Flagship Initiative – ED Data Express
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Parents need to know the strengths and weakness of the schools in their 

community. Teachers need to know which instructional methods meet the 

needs of their students. School administrators and policy makers need to 

know which programs are most effective in improving outcomes for 

students. Researchers need access to information to help determine what 

works and what does not.

ED Data Express is a web site designed to improve the public’s ability to 

access and explore high value State-level data collected by the 

Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE).

• Strategic Action Plan for Transparency

The Strategic Action Plan for Transparency reviews the electronic data 

that the Department of Education publishes, including electronic data at 

Data.gov, USASpending.gov, and Recovery.gov as well as by EDFacts, 

FSA, and NCES.

• Public Participation

The Department of Education encourages public participation using 

web-based collaboration tools. We will continue to use web-based 

tools available at ED.gov and other third-party offerings to engage the 

public in a discussion on education topics. As part of the development 

of Department’s Open Government plan, the Department used 

IdeaScale, an online discussion tool, along with other federal agencies, 

in February and March of 2010 to gather public feedback. During that 

period, 114 ideas and 200 comments were collected from the public. 

This feedback was reviewed and taken into consideration in 

formulating the Department’s Open Government plan.

• Enhancing the Department’s Web site

The Department of Education’s web site has deployed a robust web 2.0

platform, making it easier to engage the public using collaboration 

capabilities. This modular architecture adds to www.ed.gov the 

capability to offer public commenting on web pages, voting on content 

items, discussion forums and more. The Department uses a mixture 

of these tools to communicate with the public.
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• OpenED

Internally, ED employees can participate and collaborate online using 

the OpenED portal which has been operating since 2009. Over 25 

percent of employees have logged on to the OpenED Forum,

accumulating a total of 8,519 visits to the site since its inception.

OpenED has a robust governance structure. All ideas are reviewed by 

committee and 59 ideas were referred to ED senior leaders for further 

consideration. Senior leaders have provided responses to 25 ideas to 

date.

The first year of this Administration has laid a strong foundation for an open 

Department built solidly on the foundations of transparency, participation,

and collaboration. In the coming months, ED will shore up this foundation 

and address sustainability by (1) institutionalizing Open Government 

practices with standards and procedures to ensure that these principles are 

adopted across the agency, and (2) ensuring that the Open Government 

Plan continues to be strategically aligned with the Agency’s mission as our 

strategic plan evolves and we work with Congress to reauthorize the 

Elementary and Secondary Education Act. With this Open Government Plan, 

ED will strives togive the American people a transparent, open and 

collaborative Department that works for and with its citizens and customers 

to improve education in this nation.
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Introduction

This Open Government Plan for the Department of Education articulates 

Secretary Arne Duncan’s response to the Office of Management and Budget’s 

Open Government Directive (OMB M-10-06). The Open Government 

Directive requires Departments and Agencies to document specific steps that 

will achieve the transparency, participation, and collaboration goals of 

President Obama and his Administration. More importantly, this plan 

expresses the values that are held by the Secretary and that permeate this 

Department concerning the role of transparency and citizen-centered 

government. 

The Department of Education (ED) embraces the principles of increased 

transparency, participation and collaboration as essential to accomplishing 

its mission. By focusing on practices and opening the gates to data, we 

anticipate the creation of new information and knowledge that will help to 

promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by 

fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.

The Department of Education has begun and will continue improving 

transparency in significant ways. Examples include:

Secretary Duncan and senior staff visited all 50 states on a Listening and 

Learning Tour. During this tour parents, teachers, students, and citizens 

heard and shared information about No Child Left Behind and new education 

reform. ED deployed social media tools to enable the public to join the 

discussion online. This online discussion remains open, and ED will continue 

to review all feedback and ensure it is available to all reform activities.

ED began and will continue to announce meetings with stakeholders to 

increase participation in discussions about the reauthorization of the 

Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Transcripts and videos of the 

meetings are posted on the web for those who are unable to attend.

Every session of the annual Federal Student Aid Conference was videotaped 

and posted on the web. ED is implementing innovative solutions to capture, 

store, and distribute extensive video content going forward, increasing 

opportunities for collaboration with citizens.
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ED launched the Federal Student Aid Data Center to provide a centralized 

source for information and data about the operation of federal financial 

assistance programs. 

ED posted spending and activity reports for the American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act, information about technical assistance, staff contacts with 

lobbyists, and more.

Names and biographies of political appointees are an easy three clicks from 

the ED.gov home page. We will continue this level of easy access to 

information about key Department leaders.

In February 2009, Secretary Duncan established the OpenED project to help 

identify cost savings and improvements across the agency. OpenED, is a 

Department-wide employee idea-capture-and-collaboration project that 

allows employees to engage in ongoing, productive discussions about ways

to enhance the work of the Department. The Forum draws upon the 

institutional knowledge and creativity of all ED employees to improve 

programs and Department operations. ED will continue to leverage this tool 

to increase transparency among internal stakeholders.
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II. Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration

in Programs

A. Race to the Top – Game Changing Reforms

The Race to the Top program, a $4.35 billion fund created under 

the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), is 

the largest competitive education grant program in U.S. history, 

warranting unprecedented transparency and participation to 

ensure the best possible results. The $4 billion for the Race to 

the Top Fund is designed to provide incentives to States to 

implement large-scale, system-changing reforms that improve

student achievement, close achievement gaps, and increase

graduation and college enrollment rates.

From the beginning, the Department has made it a priority to 

conduct the historic Race to the Top competition with the utmost 

transparency, participation, and collaboration. When ED issued 

the original criteria for the competition, the Department couild 

have waived the public comment period because it was the first 

year of the competition, but ED decided to take public comment 

believing that constructive criticism from stakeholders across the 

country would strengthen the program. 

The notice of proposed priorities (NPP), published in July 2009, 

prompted an outpouring of public comments. Over 1,160

commenters submitted thousands of unique comments, ranging 

from one paragraph to 67 pages. Parents submitted comments, 

as did professional associations. Scores of public officials and 

educators, governors, chief State school officers, teachers, and 

principals weighed in with suggestions and critiques. Individuals 

from all 50 States and the District of Columbia, including over 

550 individuals and 200 organizations, commented on the 

notice. The extensive and thoughtful public commentary on the 

NPP was invaluable in helping the Department revise, improve, 

and clarify the priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection 

criteria for the Race to the Top program. 

When we published the final application in November 2009, we 

included – in addition to the criteria – the detailed scoring rubric 
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that we would give reviewers to help them judge the criteria.1 

The purpose was to be absolutely transparent with the public 

and with applicants about how the peer reviewers would judge 

applications for this historic competition. 

In an effort to help States understand the application, we hosted 

two technical assistance planning workshops during December 

2009, in Denver, Colorado and Baltimore, Maryland. Both 

workshops were open to the public, and the Baltimore workshop 

included a conference call to facilitate attendance for interested 

parties who otherwise could not participate. A total of 216 

participants attended the two workshops, including participants 

from 49 States and the District of Columbia. As part of this 

effort, and to further promote transparency, we posted on our 

web site the slides and transcripts from the workshops, as well 

as an evaluation from attendees. This information is available at 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/technicalassistance.html. 

We also formed a cross-functional team that met regularly to 

respond to the many questions sent to our email inbox or left on 

the dedicated phone line. Since November 2009, we have 

received over 700 inquiries. Based on the questions we received 

from the public, we made frequent updates to our Frequently 

Asked Questions (FAQ) document. .2 

When we issued the original notices, we committed to publishing 

every State’s application – together with the final scores each 

received and the transcript and/or video of each finalist’s 

presentation – on our web site at the conclusion of each Phase of 

the competition.3 After we received the Phase 1 applications, 

there was tremendous public interest in the applications, and so 

we decided to publish them even earlier. We will publish every 

reviewer’s scores and comments (without the reviewers’ names) 

after awards are announced for each Phase. This information is

 1 http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/application.doc!,!starting!on!page!75 2

!For!ease!of!use,!those!addenda!and!the!original!document!have!been!incorporated!into!one!document.!!See!

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/faq.html

3

!The!deadline!for!Phase!1!of!Race!to!the!Top!was!January!19,!2010,!with!awards!announced!March!29,!2010.!!

States!that!did!not!receive!funding,!or!that!did!not!apply!in!the!first!Phase,!could!apply!for!funding!in!Phase!2,!with!

applications!due!by!June!1,!2010.
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available at http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-

applications/index.html.

We have also endeavored to conduct the peer review process 

with as much public transparency as is appropriate given the 

competitive nature of the grant process. This began when the 

Secretary issued an open call for reviewers; in response, we 

received about 1,500 nominations and applications. We have 

also published our reviewer training materials, the evaluation of 

the training by reviewers, a detailed description of how the 

reviewers were selected, a summary of the application review 

process for the public, and, in advance of publishing the 

reviewers’ names at the conclusion of Phase 1, demographic 

information about the reviewers. This information is available at 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/applicationreview.html. 

It is worth noting that the Race to the Top criteria themselves 

also have a substantial focus on transparency (e.g. the criteria in 

Section C, Data Systems to Support Instruction, and criterion 

(D)(4), which rewards States for plans to publicly report data on 

teacher and principal credentialing programs ) and collaboration 

(e.g. criterion (A)(1), which encourages collaboration between 

school districts and the State, and criterion (A)(2), which 

rewards States for achieving broad stakeholder support). The 

full Race to the Top criteria are available at 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executivesummary.pdf. 

Finally, as the Department embarks on an unprecedented level 

of flexible, collaborative technical assistance with grantees, we 

will continue to work to not only support our grantees, but to 

share their lessons nationwide. As part of their grants, States 

are required to make any work developed with the funds freely 

available to others. States may do this by posting their work on

a web site that we identify (unless the work is otherwise 

protected by law or agreement as proprietary information). 

Forty states and the District of Columbia answered the challenge 

in Phase I. With their leadership, stakeholders in their states sat 

down together, looked hard at what is and is not working in 
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education, and developed bold and creative reform plans that 

give us great hope for the future of America.

On March 4, 2010, we announced that 16 applicants advanced

as finalists:

Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, 

Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North 

Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and 

Tennessee. 

On March 29, ED announced that Delaware and Tennessee were 

the winners in Phase 1 of the Race to the Top competition.

Find the complete applications, scores and reviewers comments 

for all applicants in their entirety online at Resources - Race to 

the Top Fund.

B. Race to the Top Assessment

The Race to the Top Assessment Program is a $350 million grant 

competition designed to fill an urgent need in the nation’s 

educational system. It seeks to provide valid and instructionally 

useful assessments that provide accurate information about what 

students know and can do. These assessments will be anchored 

in standards designed to enable every student to gain the 

knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college or the 

workplace by the time he or she graduates from high school. 

These grants will support the work of consortia of States that 

develop and implement common, high-quality assessments 

aligned with common college- and career-ready K-12 standards. 

The use of common assessments based on common standards 

will promote a culture of higher expectations as well as 

collaboration on best practices. States will use these 

assessment systems to expand instructional practice and support 

continuous improvement that meaningfully improves school and 

educator effectiveness and enhances program impact. 

Transparency and Public Input
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To ensure that this program makes the most effective use of 

funds, the Department held 10 public meetings to accept input 

from experts and other stakeholders. At these meetings, held

between November 2009 and January 2010, 48 invited 

assessment experts joined representatives from 37 State 

educational agencies and nearly 1,000 members of the public for 

over 50 hours of public and expert contribution on critical

questions about assessment and assessment design. 

Additionally, the Department solicited written input and received 

over 100 comments.

All written input as well as the materials presented at the public 

input meetings and transcripts are available on the Race to the 

Top Assessment Program’s web site at 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetopassessment/index.html.

Notice Inviting Applications 

As part of the Race to the Top Assessment Application package, 

the Department will publish the final requirements, definitions,

eligibility, and selection criteria. Additionally, this package will 

include the scoring rubric peer reviewers will use to evaluate all 

proposals. All requirements, application materials, and guidance 

will be posted on our web site and accessible to the public. 

To assist prospective applicants in preparing an application and 

to respond to questions, the Department will host a Technical 

Assistance Meeting on April 22, 2010. For those who cannot 

attend, a transcript of the meeting will be available on the Race 

to the Top Assessment program web site at 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment. 

Announcements of any other technical assistance opportunities 

for prospective applicants will also be available at this web site.

C. The Listening and Learning Tour — Elementary 

and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 

Reauthorization

This past year Secretary Duncan and senior staff visited all 50 

states on a Listening and Learning Tour to hear from parents, 
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students, and citizens about No Child Left Behind and education 

reform. Americans were invited to join the discussion online.

They took the lessons they learned from across America and 

included them in the Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization 

of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The blueprint for revising the ESEA asks states to adopt collegeand career-ready standards and rewards schools for producing 

dramatic gains in student achievement. The proposal challenges 

the nation to embrace educational standards that would put 

America on a path to global leadership.

The blueprint provides incentives for states to adopt academic 

standards that prepare students to succeed in college and the 

workplace and create accountability systems that measure 

student growth toward meeting the goal that all children 

graduate and succeed in college.

D. Investing in Innovation (i3)

i3 is an innovative grant fund established as part of the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). It 

provides support to local educational agencies (LEAs), and 

nonprofit organizations in partnership with (a) one or more LEAs 

or (b) a consortium of schools.

Applicants must address one of the four areas that are driving 

the Obama administration’s school reform agenda: 

• Supporting effective teachers and principals;

• Improving the use of data to accelerate student 

achievement;

• Complementing the implementation of standards and 

assessments that prepare students for success in college 

and careers; and

• Turning around persistently low-performing schools.

Unlike other federal grant programs where evidence is a 

selection criterion, in the i3 program evidence is a formal 
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eligibility requirement. The i3 regulations also include specific 

definitions for what constitutes strong evidence and moderate 

evidence and will award three types of grants based on these 

three levels of evidence. Development grants will require a 

reasonable hypothesis and will be aimed at helping develop fresh 

ideas, Validation grants will require moderate evidence and will 

be aimed at validating and spreading promising programs on a 

State or regional scale, and Scale Up grants will require strong 

evidence and will be aimed at bringing proven programs to 

national, regional, or State scale. The Department expects to 

make Development grants of up to $5 million each; Validation 

grants of up to $30 million each; Scale Up grants of up to $50 

million each. Complete information on the i3 program can be 

found at the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) web site.

In keeping with the innovative nature of this program, i3 has 

modeled transparency principles throughout its development. 

The Department published the notice of proposed priorities (NPP) 

to obtain public comment, hosted webinars following the NPP 

publication to answer questions, and held pre-application 

meetings in three cities (Denver, Baltimore, and Atlanta) to 

further engage the public in the competition. These sessions 

were also made available via webinar. Approximately 1000 

people attended the meetings, with an additional 2000 

participants via webinar.

The Department has applied transparency principles to the peer 

review process. An Open Call was made for peer reviewers, 

including visible posting on ED.gov, and approximately 1000 

applications have been received for peer reviewer positions.

To further support innovation, the Office of Innovation and 

Improvement has launched the Open Innovation Portal, a public 

forum for all who wish to participate in creating opportunities for 

partnership and local private and public funding. This web portal 

connects grant applicants, stakeholders, funders and other 

participants to cultivate innovative ideas related to education. 

Through this portal, the Department hopes that partnerships will 

develop that will accelerate the development, identification, and 

broad use of innovative products, practices, and processes to 

improve education in schools. 
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The Open Innovation Portal, available at 

http://innovation.ed.gov, provides a public forum for all who 

wish to participate in creating opportunities for partnership and 

local private and public funding – potentially multiplying many 

times over the federal funding opportunity. The portal allows 

the posting, commenting and scoring of ideas. It carries 

additional features such as inclusion of video clips, idea 

leaderboards and challenges from non-profit partners.

As of March 29, 2010, the Open Innovation Portal has 2851 

members. A total of 76 ideas have been submitted, with 88% 

having received at least one question, answer, or comment. An 

active network is developing, with 716 network requests, 455 

private messages, 254 idea questions, and 74 idea comments. 

The Department is encouraged by the early success of this 

innovative collaboration tool.

E. Draft National Education Technology Plan

On March 3, 2010, the Department released a draft of the 

National Educational Technology Plan: "Transforming American 

Education: Learning Powered by Technology." 

This plan was prepared for the Office of Educational Technology 

by leading researchers and practitioners. It represents their best 

ideas about how we can bring forward our schools—making them 

centers of learning designed to close the gap between the 

technology-rich and exciting experiences that dominate students' 

lives outside of school while preparing them for success in 

today's competitive global marketplace.

In keeping with the Open Government Initiative, ED has 

published the draft on the Department's Web site at National 

Education Technology Plan 2010. The public has been invited to 

review it, comment on it, and to refine it. ED welcomes 

suggestions about ways to accelerate the development and 

adoption of tools and resources that merge education and 

technology as well as incentives to help spark innovation, scaling 

of the most effective products, and continuous improvement.
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You can find Secretary Duncan’s complete remarks at Using 

Technology to Transform Schools--Remarks by Secretary Arne 

Duncan at the Association of American Publishers Annual 

Meeting .

F. Financial Transparency of American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act (ARRA) 

Historically, the federal government accounts for only 9 percent

of total U.S. public education spending annually, with state and 

local governments providing the remaining 91 percent of 

funding, and states maintaining primary authority over education 

spending. As a result of the 2008 recession, however, state and 

local governments faced severe revenue shortfalls, limiting their 

ability to fund education at previous levels given balancedbudget restrictions. The American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 (ARRA) created the one-time $48.6 billion State 

Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) to address this crisis. Both 

ARRA and the Department demand accountability and 

transparency regarding this massive infusion of federal funds 

into the public education system. For example, the Department 

posted all SFSF applications and amendments to ensure 

stakeholders are informed on a State’s use of the program 

funds. The Department intends to build on this experience to 

create a new level of transparency regarding state education 

spending on an on-going basis.

First, the Department is shining an unprecedented spotlight on 

the flow of ARRA funds at both the state and program level. All 

ARRA agencies are required to submit weekly spending updates 

by program to Recovery.gov. The Department of Education has 

gone above and beyond this requirement by aggregating this 

data into formats more meaningful to education stakeholders. 

Weekly reports of obligations and outlays for each state by 

program, and for each program by state, are posted at:

http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/reports.html 

Second, the Department is providing unprecedented 

transparency into the education funding requirement that states 

use federal funding to support state and local funding, 
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maintaining overall support rather than allowing funds to be 

shifted elsewhere (Maintenance of Effort or MOE). For SFSF, 

each State must assure that it will provide, for each of fiscal 

years (FYs) 2009 through 2011, at least the levels of support for 

elementary and secondary education and for public institutions 

of higher education as it provided for FY 2006. If a State is 

unable to maintain the required levels of support for education, 

it may apply for and obtain a waiver of the MOE requirements if 

it is able to demonstrate that it has not reduced the percentage 

of total State revenues spent on education. Examples of how

the MOE compliance effort ensures transparency include:

• All SFSF applications and amendments are posted at: 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/resources.

html

 Requests for MOE waivers and status of the waiver 

applications are posted at:

http://www.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/applicant.h

tml

• All SFSF Guidance and Monitoring Plans are posted at: 

http://www.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/applicant.h

tml

Finally, ARRA provided a new level of transparency into the 

spending of federal funds at a granular level via the required 

Section 1512 Quarterly Reporting by recipients regarding ARRA 

awards, spending, and job creation. These data are compiled 

and posted by the Recovery, Accountability, and Transparency 

Board on Recovery.gov. To serve the financial transparency 

needs of education stakeholders, however, the Department 

aggregates these data at the state level by program and the 

program level by state. The posted data include the detailed 

jobs narratives provided by each state on jobs created with SFSF 

funds, allowing an unprecedented window into the use of funds

by state and by program. The Department’s Section 1512 

reports are posted at:
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http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/spending/impact2.ht

ml 

The Department intends to build on these ARRA practices to 

enhance the transparency of all of its grant programs at the 

state level, in conjunction with the upcoming guidance on federal 

spending information, including sub-award collection.

G. Federal Student Aid (FSA) College.gov

College.gov conveys the Department’s strong belief that 

postsecondary education is an achievable goal for anyone, 

regardless of income, ethnicity, age or gender. This unique Web 

site motivates students with inspirational stories and information 

about planning, preparing and paying for college. With students’ 

input and participation, College.gov was created for high school 

students and their families as a comprehensive online resource 

with the help and tools students need to get started. College.gov 

seeks to build an online community that fosters hope, highlights 

the opportunity of education beyond high school and empowers 

users with clearly defined resources to reach their college 

dreams.

The College.gov team has worked to bring transparency, 

participation and collaboration to this online experience. Before 

beginning work on the project, a “listening tour” was held to 

gauge the needs of citizens. Students and families from across 

the country revealed that they needed answers to the most basic 

questions on attaining education beyond high school. Students 

said that wanted to hear from and be inspired by others like 

them. Through focus groups and usability testing, the target 

audience’s voice is continuously heard on matters of site design, 

content and features. User feedback is extremely valued. Every 

user-submitted suggestion is logged, discussed by the team, and 

then considered during the change management process. A 

short survey on the site allows the team to monitor satisfaction 

levels, and these responses always trend favorable. All survey 

data and site metrics are documented and analyzed each month 

to identify areas for improvement. 
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Site features that encourage participation include:

I’m Going Billboards

College.gov allows users to submit their inspirational messages 

and pictures, or “billboards,” which are posted on the homepage

to remind them that this site is for students and by students. 

Users can then email their billboards to friends and family or 

embed their billboards into their own sites or blogs. All users are 

able to browse through student-made “I’m going” billboards on 

the home page, which creates a sense of unity and joint 

purpose.

Student Videos

College.gov features inspirational videos and profiles of current 

college students and their parents describing the paths they took 

to get college, despite the obstacles they faced. This feature 

demonstrates that the dream of going to college is possible.

Fan Page on Facebook

Building a community on Facebook allows students to share

College.gov in an easy way that connects with their peers. The 

fan base is growing, with 12,940 current fans. They receive 

biweekly wall posts on new features, relevant content, or 

interesting links.

Personalized Roadmap

This is an interactive tool for students to create an “I’m going” 

personalized roadmap which details the steps to take to get to 

college. These can be printed out as a single page or a wallsized poster, or saved as the desktop on a user’s computer. 

Content

Content is organized and presented in a way for students to 

easily find the answers to their higher education questions: Why 

Go? What to Do? and How to Pay? Links to valuable online 

resources, such as College Navigator (school search site), Free 

Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and FAFSA4caster 

are prevalent throughout the site. 
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III. Strategic Action Plan for Transparency

While the Department feels that it has made some great strides in 

transparency over the past year, we recognize that there are 

continuous improvements we can make that will allow greater insight 

into internal processes and plans and ensure a constant, open dialogue 

with our stakeholders. Below are listed several new and ongoing 

efforts by the Department to ensure we are indeed fulfilling our 

responsibilities to members of the public to maintain transparency. 

A. Flagship Initiative

The President’s Goals in Education are:

• for the United States to become number one in the world in 

the percentage of population with a college degree by 2020; 

and

• for the United States to significantly reduce gaps in high 

school graduation and college access and success by 2020.

In order to achieve these goals, accurate, timely and reliable 

information is needed -both to make changes to drastically improve 

our education system and measure progress against the President’s 

goals. For example:

• Parents need to know the strengths and weakness of the schools 

in their community when compared to each other and their 

neighboring communities. 
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• Teachers need to know which instructional methods meet the 

needs of their students and which interventions are most 

effective in addressing difficult problems. 

• School administrators and policy makers need to know which 

programs are most effective in improving outcomes for students 

so programs that work can be scaled up and those that aren’t as 

effective can be improved or discarded.

• Researchers need access to information to help determine what 

works and what does not, identify areas where more information 

is needed, and drive innovative ideas to improve outcomes for 

students.

As technology rapidly transforms and improves the ability to share 

information and use it to improve outcomes for students, we must 

ensure individual privacy continues to be protected, people understand 

what the information means, and data is used appropriately. 

A combination of strategic actions will be taken as part of the 

Transparency in Education Initiative, such as its work on ED Data 

Express to improve access to high-value Department data and 

developing and implementing more robust technical assistance and 

guidance for ensuring privacy is protected. 

ED Data Express

ED Data Express is a web site designed to improve the public’s ability 

to access and explore high value State-level data collected by the 

Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE). 

The site is in the final stages of development and focuses mainly on 

data reported by States on key K-12 grant programs funded by OESE. 

The site currently includes data from EDFacts, Consolidated State 

Performance Reports (CSPR), State Accountability Workbooks, and the 

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). 

ED Data Express utilizes a web-enabled database application that 

allows users to select a particular data element (or set of data 

elements) and view it in several different ways. The site includes 

current and previous year data on student performance, 

demographics, accountability, and some statistical components. Data 
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can be viewed in three ways: a state profile page, a data element 

explorer, and a build-a-table page. The state profile pages include 

charts and tables with key data for each state. The data element 

explorer allows users to view a single element across all states, both 

graphically and in a table. The state table page allows users to build 

customized tables by selecting specific indicators and specific states. 

In additional to the data viewing tools, the site includes an “about” 

page with information about the collections and guidance for 

appropriate use, a page with definitions of important terms, a 

frequently asked questions page, and links to other education data 

resources. 

The site is designed to be interactive and to present the data in a 

clear, easy to use way, with options to download information into Excel 

or manipulate the data within the web site. Members of the general 

public, grantees, stakeholder groups, media, and Department of 

Education personnel, who are interested in K-12 grant-related data, 

are envisioned as its primary users. As such, the site is designed to 

accommodate different interests and types of users. For example, 

someone interested in quick information about a single state can view 

the state profile page for a general overview. Someone who is 

interested in information about a particular data element or who wants 

the flexibility to build a custom query can use the data element 

explorer or state tables tool. The three tools incorporate graphs and 

charts to help users visualize the data. Future versions of the site will 

include additional data visualization tools, such as a mapping feature 

and enhanced graphing tools. ED Data Express is not intended to 

meet the needs of individuals, researchers, or organizations looking to 

do complex analyses; for that reason it provides links to NCES tools, 

so that users who are interested in using full and complete statistics 

on the condition of education in the United States may obtain that 

data. NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing 

data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. 

ED Data Express is also designed to interface with social networking 

applications, such as Facebook and Digg, to better share information in 

these newly emerging channels. As the public adopts new ways to 

access and use information, the more the Department can adapt and 
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share information via these new channels, the more success we will 

have in reaching our audiences and addressing their interests.

OESE expects to launch the site internally in early June 2010 and 

launch the site publically by July 1, 2010 contingent upon final 

Departmental clearance and approval.

Promoting Transparency

All information contained on ED Data Express is currently publically 

accessible in State-specific files. However, it is published in various 

places on the Department’s web site, mostly in a PDF format. The 

information is difficult to find, burdensome to update, and frequently is 

released with significant delays. The burden of compiling and using 

the data in this format is very high, since a user must open every 

State’s PDF file and manually consolidate the information into a file 

that can be used for analysis. A design goal of ED Data Express is to 

provide an innovation with a clear “relative advantage” over the 

current process that is simple to use and provides various ways of 

viewing the data. In ED Data Express, the information is consolidated 

into one location, and users can quickly select the information they 

need, view it several different ways, and download it into Excel for 

further analysis. With the data more readily accessible and easy to 

explore, the site will facilitate the ability of States and grantees to 

learn from one another, and help the Department learn how to share 

information properly with people who want to look at data, but are less 

familiar with its use than researchers. 

Promoting Participation

The increased accessibility and ease of use improves the ability of 

people to view, consider, and use the State-reported data. It enables 

the public and grantees to identify States that may be getting better 
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results or using different approaches, thus helps to inform their own 

decision-making and program development. 

In addition, the ED Data Express web site includes a user feedback 

survey that allows OESE to receive ratings, comments, and 

suggestions from users about the site. The survey tool is flexible, so 

that OESE can add different questions to encourage continued 

feedback and dialogue. OESE has discussed the web site at EDFacts

and NCES conferences, and will continue to use those opportunities to 

discuss the site and solicit suggestions from attendees. OESE is also 

planning to meet with the EDFacts team’s EIMAC Standing Task Force, 

which is a group of approximately ten SEA representatives (some of 

which are EDFacts coordinators). EDFacts uses this task force as a 

“sounding board” for major new initiatives that they have proposed. 

OESE believes that this group could be a useful partner, especially in 

moving forward with the launch of the site and for future 

enhancements.

Promoting Collaboration

OESE partnered with the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy 

Development (OPEPD) EDFacts team on this project to more efficiently 

obtain the relevant data, receive assistance in the design of the site, 

and to use the EDFacts Metadata and Process System (EMAPS) to 

facilitate the collection and upload of data elements embedded in 

documents (e.g., Consolidated State Applications). OESE is working 

closely with NCES staff on the design of the Ed Data Express site, and 

will utilize their technical expertise to appropriately balance the site 

simplicity with the need to properly display data and document data 

sources and limitations. OESE met with the Office of the General 

Council (OGC) and the Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO), the 

office tasked with administering the Family Education Privacy Rights 

Act (FERPA) (a law that requires protection of student records) and will 

continue to work with them to ensure that the site is consistent with 

statutory and regulatory responsibilities regarding privacy, 

confidentiality, security, or other restrictions. The process has 

included collaboration with Office of the Chief Information Officer 
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(OCIO) to use Department web servers and meet IT security 

standards. Finally, OESE has held conversations with other grantmaking offices that are interested in making their grant program data 

more readily accessible. 

OESE will gather quantitative information on site usage by tracking 

numbers of web page hits. Additionally, OESE will use its Grantee 

Satisfaction Survey to solicit feedback from grantees. The Grantee 

Satisfaction Survey is an ongoing, government-wide survey that 

includes a series of benchmarked questions that are comparable 

across agencies. It also allows agencies to include program specific 

questions; OESE is taking advantage of this tool to collect input on 11 

major grant programs, including several of the Recovery Act grant 

programs. Questions about ED Data Express will be added to this 

survey to examine the Department’s use of technology and its success 

in making State-reported data more accessible and easy to explore.

The Department views ED Data Express as a first step rather than a 

finished product. The experience and lessons learned via OESE’s 

launch of Ed Data Express will offer a new and exciting way of learning 

how best to publish grant program related data for general audiences. 

As the site matures and expands, the governance structure for Ed 

Data Express will also need to evolve. To start that process, at the 

request of OESE, EDFacts created a working group within the 

Department’s Data Governance Board (that includes representatives of 

the other grant-making offices and key program support offices) to 

begin conversations about the sustained management and support of 

ED Data Express. 

B. Timely publishing of Electronic Data

1. Data.gov

Data produced by government agencies are often hard to 

find or are published in proprietary formats of limited 

utility. As a result, a wealth of information remains 
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untapped by the ingenuity and creativity of the American 

people. Data.gov is a citizen-friendly platform that 

provides access to Federal datasets. With a searchable 

data catalog, Data.gov helps the public find, access, and 

download non-sensitive Government data and tools in a 

variety of formats.

We are currently moving our datasets to Data.gov and will 

continue to do so as quickly as practicable.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has 

been the traditional source of high-value4 data at the 

Department of Education. 

Recently, the Federal Student Aid Data Center was 

launched to provide a centralized source for information 

and data related to the federal financial assistance 

programs. Many of the high-value datasets are released 

simultaneously on both the FSA Data Center and Data.gov.

The entire high-value public use data collection of the 

NCES is currently available online either at NCES.ed.gov or 

at Data.gov. All new public use data sets are posted to 

Data.gov when they are released. At time of this 

document’s publication, we currently have the following

available at Data.gov (we have included examples of the 

types of questions these data sets are intended to 

answer):

• Common Core of Data, School District Finance Survey, SY 2006-07, FY 

2007

What kinds of distance education courses are provided 

in the U.S.? What is known about the availability and 

use of these courses? How they are delivered to 

students? What policies govern them?

• FAFSA Application Volume

 

4 HighLvalue!information!is!information!that!can!be!used!to!increase!agency!accountability!and!responsiveness;!

improve!public!knowledge!of!the!agency!and!its!operations;!further!the!core!mission!of!the!agency;!create!

economic!opportunity;!or!respond!to!need!and!demand!as!identified!through!public!consultation.
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How many students took the first step toward applying 

for college financial assistance by filling out the FAFSA 

(Free Application for Federal Student Aid)? How many 

students in each state filled it out? What is the 

breakdown (number of students who filled it out) by 

postsecondary institution?

• Postsecondary Education Quick Information System (PEQIS)

This file contains data from a quick-response survey 

using the Postsecondary Education Quick Information 

System (PEQIS). It provides national estimates on 

postsecondary education topics (e.g., distance 

education, dual-enrollment) among 2-year and 4-year 

Title IV eligible, degree-granting institutions.

• Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)

How do U.S. students (in 4th and 8th grades) perform 

in mathematics and science compared to students other 

countries? What factors may be related to achievement 

in these subject areas?

Additionally, NCES is in the processes of posting the 

following datasets to Data.gov:

NCES Data Releases Scheduled from 2/1/2010 to 6/30/2010

• 2008-09 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary Education 

School level nonfiscal data file [Format: tab-separated values text files 

(.txt)]

• 2008-09 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary Education 

Agency (school district) level nonfiscal data file [Format: tab-separated 

values text files (.txt)]

• 2008-09 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary Education State 

level nonfiscal data file [Format: tab-separated values text files (.txt)]

• Fiscal Year 2008 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary 

Education State Fiscal (National Public Education Finance Survey) data file 

[Format: tab-separated values text files (.txt)]

• 2007-08 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary Education State 

level dropout and graduation data file [Format: tab-separated values text 

files (.txt)]

• 2007-08 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary Education 

Agency (school district) level dropout and graduation data file [Format: 

tab-separated values text files (.txt)]
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• Final revised 2007-08 Common Core of Data Elementary and Secondary 

Education State level nonfiscal data file [Format: tab-separated values 

text files (.txt)]

• Fall 2008 Integrated Postsecondary Data system (IPEDS) Enrollments 

[Format: csv files] 

o Enrollments by race/ethnicity, gender, attendance status, and 

level of student 

o Enrollments by age category, gender, attendance status, and level 

of student

o Enrollments by residence and migration of first-time freshman

o Enrollments by total entering class and retention rate

o Major field of study, race/ethnicity, gender, attendance status, and 

level of student 2008

o Total entering class and retention rates

• 2008 Integrated Postsecondary Data system (IPEDS) Graduation Rates 

for the 2002 Cohort at 4 year institutions and the 2005 cohort at 2 year 

institutions and less than 2 year institutions [Format: csv files]

o Graduation rate data for cohort year 2002 (4-year) and cohort 

year 2005 (2-year) institutions

o Graduation rate data for cohort year 2005 (less-than-2-year 

institutions)

• Fiscal Year 2008 Integrated Postsecondary Data system (IPEDS) Financial 

Statistics [Format csv files]

o Public institutions - GASB 34/35

o Public institutions - GASB 34/35 (Component units using FASB)

o Public institutions - GASB 34/35 (Component units using GASB)

o Private not-for-profit institutions or Public institutions using FASB

o Private for-profit institutions

• Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) 2004 cohort of entering students 

as of 2009

o Create tables and graphs quickly and efficiently using Quick Stats

[Data tool] 

o Create complex tables and run linear & logistic regressions using 

DAS 2.0 [Data tool] 

• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS89) Technology-based Distance 

Education for Public Elementary and Secondary School Students, 2004-05 

[Format: ASCII flat file]

• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS92) Educational Technology in U.S. 

Public Schools, Fall 2008 [Format: ASCII flat file]

• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS93) Educational Technology in Public 

School Districts, Fall 2008 [Format: ASCII flat file]

• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS 95) Teachers' Use of Educational 

Technology in U.S. Public Schools [Format: ASCII flat file]

• Fast Response Survey System (FRSS 96) Alternative Schools and Programs 

for Students At Risk of Educational Failure, 2007-08 [Format: ASCII flat 

file]

2. eRulemaking

To facilitate the public’s involvement in the Department’s 

rulemaking process, the Department participates in

Regulations.gov, an electronic, single, Government-wide 
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access point that enables the public to submit comments 

on different types of federal regulatory documents and to 

read and respond to comments submitted by other 

members of the public during the public comment period. 

Regulations.gov improves the public’s access to and 

participation in rulemaking by providing one central 

electronic location to search, retrieve, and read all federal

regulatory material. Through this site, the public can view 

a description of regulations currently open for comment, 

read the full text of these documents and any supporting 

regulatory documents, and submit comments to the 

appropriate federal agency. The public uses 

Regulations.gov to access Department of Education 

proposed, interim final, and final regulations, as well as a 

limited number of our other regulatory documents 

requesting public comment. We anticipate that the 

Department will expand its use of the system to include an 

increased number of regulatory documents in the future.

A recent search of Regulations.gov showed that the 

Department of Education has received and posted more 

than 6,300 public submissions on 980 notices and 100 

rulemakings.

3. IT Dashboard

The IT Dashboard launched in 2009, with a goal of 

showing the public how federal IT investments are 

performing. At this point, the information in the 

Dashboard provides a portion of the information necessary 

to support decisions regarding the Department’s IT 

portfolio. As the amount of information in the Dashboard 

grows, we foresee a time when results of public review will 

be one of the evaluation criteria used for decisions 

regarding how we spend IT dollars.

Internally, the visual presentation of information in the 

Dashboard is valuable as a tool to allow senior executives 

in the Department to quickly recognize key characteristics 

of the overall portfolio. As additional views are developed, 
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we can have effective discussions about the impact and 

results of investment decisions.

We have added steps in our operational IT management 

processes to ensure the Dashboard is populated with 

current information. Going forward we will seek ways to 

incorporate comments, suggestions, risks and issues 

received from the public into our governance and capital 

planning processes.

We will respond timely, thoroughly and transparently to 

any feedback received through the IT Dashboard. As 

appropriate, we will modify our agency processes to 

address weaknesses that may be identified. We will route 

specific suggestions for improvement or ideas that affect 

the portfolio through our Enterprise Architecture 

processes.

 OMB is currently using the IT Dashboard as a way for 

federal agencies to submit their IT investment data.

Agencies will update their IT investment data monthly and 

submit their complete data for every budget year, 

beginning with 2011. OMB plans to expand the amount of 

data and extend the analytical capabilities of the IT 

Dashboard over time.

The IT Dashboard is available at USAspending.gov.

4. Recovery.gov

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 

(ARRA) requires an unprecedented level of transparency 

into government spending. In particular it mandates:

• The creation of “a web site on the Internet to be 

named Recovery.gov, to foster greater accountability 

and transparency in the use of funds made available 

in this Act.” Recovery.gov is operated by the 

Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, 
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which was also created by the Recovery Act.

http://www.recovery.gov

• The creation of an agency-specific Recovery 

webpage located within the Agency site and 

identified on the home page. 

http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/

• Weekly reporting by Agencies on obligations, 

outlays, and activities

• Quarterly reporting by Recipients on awards, 

spending, jobs impact, and project status.

The Department of Education has been an active 

participant in the development and on-going evolution of 

these sites and tools since their inception. As a result of 

these initiatives, education stakeholders can now track on 

a weekly basis the speed with which the Department is 

awarding its ARRA funding and the extent to which States 

are putting this money to work. This provides a new level 

of accountability for federal and state education spending. 

At the local level, parents and community members can 

enter the zip code of their local school district, identify 

exactly how much ARRA funding has been awarded and 

spent to date, and scrutinize vendor payments over 

$25,000, holding local officials accountable for their 

decisions.

As the Department gains experience with the new level of 

transparency provided via Recovery.gov, ED continues to 

address the issue of presenting its data in a user-friendly 

format to ensure its use by the widest possible variety of 

stakeholders. In doing so, ED has gone beyond the 

requirements of recovery.gov in the following areas:

• Weekly ARRA spending to date is posted on 

ED.gov/recovery with detailed state and programlevel detail. This provides the appropriate level of 

aggregation to help citizens understand the flow of 

funds in their state to different programs, and for

program advocates to understand state-level 
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differences in flow of funds for the program in 

question.

• Section 1512 award, spending, and jobs reporting 

data are posted on ed.gov/recovery at the state and 

program level. This allows citizens to assess their 

State’s progress in using ARRA funds to save or 

create jobs, and allows policymakers to evaluate the 

impact of different ED ARRA programs relative to job 

creation.

This enhanced level of transparency for ARRA programs, 

and the attention to both the availability and accessibility 

of the information presented has set a new standard of 

transparency for the Department. The next step for the 

Department is to apply these principles to all programs, 

not just to Recovery Act programs. In particular, FFATA 

sub-award reporting implementation will be critical to 

achieving greater transparency into education funding at 

the local level.

5. USASpending.gov

The Federal Funding Accountability and 

Transparency Act of 2006 (S. 2590) is an Act of 

Congress that requires the full disclosure to the public of 

all entities or organizations receiving federal funds 

beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007. The purpose of the Act 

is to provide the public with information about how their 

tax dollars are spent in greater detail in order to build 

public trust in government and credibility in the 

professionals who use these dollars. 

The Act requires a single searchable web site, accessible 

by the public for free that includes the following 

information for each federal award: 

1. the name of the entity receiving the award;

2. the amount of the award;
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3. information on the award including transaction type, 

funding agency, etc;

4. the location of the entity receiving the award;

5. a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

Federal awards include grants, sub-grants, loans, awards, 

cooperative agreements and other forms of financial 

assistance as well as contracts, subcontracts, purchase 

orders, task orders, and delivery orders. The legislation 

does not require inclusion of individual transactions below 

$25,000 or credit card transactions before October 1, 

2008.

The searchable web site USAspending.gov was launched 

in December 2007, and is maintained by the Office of 

Management and Budget. The site provides citizens the 

ability to look at contracts, grants, loans, and other types 

of spending across many agencies. The data available on 

USAspending.gov is provided by the Federal Assistance 

Awards Data System (FAADS) and the Federal 

Procurement Data System (FPDS). 

The majority of grant, loan and some procurement data 

are also submitted by agencies. An updated version of the 

USAspending.gov Guidance was issued on June 1, 2009; 

which defines award reporting requirements necessary to 

comply with both the Federal Funding Accountability and 

Transparency Act (FFATA) and the American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act). The updated guidance 

required federal agencies to report data on their awards in 

never-before-required timeliness and detail. In June 2009, 

USAspending.gov began processing agency file 

submissions twice per month, on the 5th and the 20th, 

instead of once per month. Data on the web site is 

generally refreshed in the first and third week of every 

month.

The latest guidance is available at the following link: M-09-

19, Guidance on Data Submission under the Federal 

Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).
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6. EDFacts

EDFacts is a U.S. Department of Education initiative to put 

performance data at the center of policy, management and 

budget decisions for all K-12 educational programs. 

EDFacts centralizes performance data supplied by K-12 

state educational agencies (SEAs) with other data assets, 

such as financial grant information, within the Department 

to enable better analysis and use in policy development, 

planning and management. The purpose of EDFacts is to:

• Place the use of robust, timely performance data at 

the core of decision and policymaking in education. 

• Reduce state and district data burden and streamline 

data practices. 

• Improve state data capabilities by providing 

resources and technical assistance. 

• Provide data for planning, policy, and management 

at the federal, state, and local levels.

Until now EDFacts has only been available to Department

and State analysts. In the interest of transparency the

Department plans to make these data publicly available for 

the first time and will start by moving five datasets to

Data.gov this fiscal year:

1) Schools in need of improvement since 2004-05

2) Districts in need of improvement since 2004-05

3) Statewide assessment results in reading since 2003-

04

4) Statewide assessment results in mathematics since 

2003-04

5) District level graduation rates reported under ESEA 

for 2006-07 and 2007-08

7. Federal Student Aid (FSA) Data Center

In September 2009, Federal Student Aid established the 

FSA Data Center, a centralized, on-line source for FSA 

programmatic data. The Data Center, available at 

www.FSADataCenter.ed.gov , compiles information from 

across the Department in an effort to promote 
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transparency and increase self-service opportunities for 

our customers and stakeholders. The site is intended to 

estimate customer needs and proactively provide 

information to them in a useful and easily accessible way.

To that end, in creating the Data Center, we reviewed 

routine requests received through the press, from the Hill 

or through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and 

produced a series of new data reports to respond to the 

most common requests. For example, we created the 

Programmatic Volume Reports, which provide users both 

federal student loan and grant data by school on a 

quarterly basis. In addition, customers can easily access 

application, school, lender, guaranty agency, and default 

data as well as the Ensuring Continued Access to Student 

Loans Act (ECASLA) Loan Purchase Program Activity 

Reports on the Data Center.

As our programs evolve and the needs of our customers 

change, we will continuously review the data we produce 

and update the site accordingly. In the months ahead, we 

plan to begin posting Clery Act reviews, foreign gifts 

information and FSA contracts. As these data become

available, we will register it with the Data.gov Web site. 

8. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), one of 

the principal federal statistical agencies, is the primary 

federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to 

education in the United States and other nations. NCES is 

located within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), 

the scientific arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

The mission of NCES is to collect, analyze, report, and 

disseminate education information and statistics in a 

manner that

o meets the highest methodological standards;

o is timely, relevant, and useful to practitioners, 

researchers, policymakers, and the public;
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o is objective, secular, neutral, and non-ideological; 

and

o is free of partisan political influence and racial, 

cultural, gender, or regional bias.

NCES publishes public-use and restricted-use datasets and 

reports that describe, estimate, forecast, or analyze 

education statistics and ensure that all users have 

equitable and timely access to data. NCES statistics are 

used to track progress and trends, identify problems and 

opportunities for policy improvement, and manage and 

monitor programs.

With more than 20 survey programs, NCES covers 

education topics from birth through adulthood using crosssectional databases, longitudinal studies, and 

assessments. In addition, NCES coordinates participation 

in international assessments, administers quick-response 

surveys on pressing policy issues, assists state and local 

education agencies in improving their statistical systems, 

manages grants to develop statewide longitudinal data 

systems across the nation, and reviews and reports on 

education activities in the U.S. and foreign countries.

NCES has a Statistical Standards Program that consults 

and advises on methodological and statistical aspects 

involved in the design, collection, and analysis of education 

data. NCES program staff also provides consultation and 

advice to other organizations and agencies, and to other 

offices within the Department of Education as the need 

arises. This program publishes and updates the NCES 

Statistical Standards and monitors and administers 

restricted-use data licenses for Center’s data products.

NCES activities include: 

o Provide consistent, reliable, complete, and accurate 

indicators of education status and trends.

o Report timely, useful, and high-quality data to 

education policymakers and data users.
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o Publish reports to distribute educational statistics to 

a wide audience.

o Provide data in the form of data files and web tools 

available for research and analysis.

o Work with state and local education agencies on 

issues of data collection, maintenance, and analysis.

o Assures compliance with Section 183 of the 

Education Sciences Reform Act, (ESRA) which

prohibits the release of personally identifiable 

information by the Department, and includes felony 

criminal penalties, including imprisonment.

NCES serves:

o Educators and educational organizations

o Federal, state, and local education officials

o Congress

o The news media

o Researchers

o Students

o Parents

o The general public

You can find additional information about NCES at the National Center 

for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. 

Department of Education.

C. Participation and Collaboration Communities
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The Department is using a number of technologies to encourage 

public participation and collaboration. We highlighted college.gov 

at the beginning of this plan and describe several others below. 

While this is the future direction of the Department, it is just the 

beginning. Online communities are already becoming 

commonplace – a trend we expect to continue and accelerate. 

Some of these communities will be long term – like college.gov –

and others may be special purpose focus groups that come into 

being to solve a problem and dissolve at the end of their need. If 

transparency allows visibility then these tools can provide the 

rich participation and collaboration experiences needed online to 

support communities?.

1. Public Participation at ED.gov

The Department of Education encourages public 

participation using web-based collaboration tools. The 

Department of Education will continue to use web-based 

tools available at ed.gov and other third-party offerings to 

engage the public in a discussion on topics related to 

education.

The Department of Education recently deployed Drupal, an 

open-source web platform, in part to provide collaboration 

opportunities. Through its modular architecture, Drupal 

provides www.ed.gov capabilities such as public 

commenting on web pages, voting on topics and discussion 

forums.

In the future, ED will use a mixture of these tools to 

encourage public feedback on education activities, 

classroom and administrative best practices, high-value 

data set releases and other special topics as they arise.

An example of public commenting on ed.gov web pages 

can be found on the 2010 National Education Technology 

Plan (http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010). The 

Office of Educational Technology published a draft of this 

document online and invited the public to comment. The 

plan describes how information and communication 

technologies can help transform American education. It 

provides concrete goals to inform state and local 
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educational technology plans, and recommendations to 

inspire research, development, and innovation. “We are 

open to your comments,” Secretary Duncan said in a video 

announcing the plan. “Tell us about how technology has 

changed your school or classroom.”

Interested parties are able to attach comments specifically 

on individual pages of the plan. As part of the feature, 

participants are able to reply online to existing comments, 

creating a forum for discussion. This targeted feedback is 

being gathered and analyzed and will be contributory to 

future drafts of the plan.

The ED.gov blog (http://www.ed.gov/blog) is another tool 

used for gathering topical feedback. The blog features a 

“Join the Conversation” section that highlights blog posts 

where public feedback is encouraged. This extends 

engagement opportunities such as the Department’s 

“Listening and Learning Tour” events by providing an 

additional venue for the public to participate in the open 

discussion.

ED does not produce significant education materials; 

however, we do maintain a one-stop website designed to 

make it easy for teachers, parents, students, and citizens 

to find education materials from ALL federal agencies. The 

website, FREE, is one of ED’s most popular web offerings 

because nearly all the 1,600 resources available there are 

free for re-use. Federal Resources for Educational 

Excellence is available at FREE -- http://www.free.ed.gov/.

2. Encouraging Office Participation at ED.gov

Another reason for choosing Drupal as the ED.gov web 

platform is that it provides streamlined methods for our 

offices to publish online content. Shortly after this plan is 

published, we will provide a new content management 

system that makes it easier to keep office web pages 

updated with current information and developments and 

that includes RSS feeds. The goal is to encourage an 

open, continuously-updating information hub powered by 

the offices that make up our Department. This ability 
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creates a stronger connection between our employees and 

the stakeholders that rely on us. 

3. OpenEducation.IdeaScale.com

As part of the development of this plan, ED used 

IdeaScale, along with other federal agencies, in February 

and March of 2010 to gather public feedback. During that 

period, over 100 ideas and 200 comments were collected 

from the public. This feedback was reviewed and taken 

into consideration for the formation of this plan. 

4. Open Innovation Web Portal

The Department’s Investing in Innovation (i3) fund 

supports the development of path-breaking new ideas, the 

validation of approaches that have demonstrated promise, 

and the scale-up of our nation’s most successful and 

proven education innovations. The Open Innovation 

Portal, available at http://innovation.ed.gov, provides a 

public forum for all who wish to participate in creating 

opportunities for partnership and local private and public 

funding – potentially multiplying many times over the 

federal funding opportunity. This web portal connects 

grant applicants, stakeholders, funders, and other 

participants to cultivate innovative ideas related to 

education. The portal allows the posting, commenting and 

scoring of ideas. It carries additional features such as 

inclusion of video clips, idea leaderboards and challenges 

from non-profit partners.

5. Employee Participation through OpenED

OpenED—President Obama pledged to look for budgetcutting ideas “from the bottom up,” saying he would 

establish a process through which every government 

worker could submit ideas on how to save money. In 

February 2009, to heed the President’s call, Secretary 

Duncan established in the Department the OpenED project 

to help identify cost savings and improvements across the 

agency.
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OpenED is an established Department-wide employee idea 

creation and collaboration project created and managed by 

the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, 

Policy and Program Studies Service (PPSS), for the Office 

of the Secretary (OS), Chief of Staff. Along with an email 

account and hard-copy suggestion box, OpenED operates 

an online forum that provides the opportunity for 

employees to engage in ongoing, productive discussions 

about ideas to enhance the work of the Department. The 

Forum seeks to draw upon the institutional knowledge and 

creativity of all ED employees to improve programs and 

Department operations. 

This IT application allows all employees access to the 

system using their network authorization. Once in the

system, employees can enter an idea into the Forum and 

other employees may read or comment on the new idea. 

All entries are accessible and visible to each employee in 

the agency. This open discussion typically leads to further 

development of the idea or results in a better solution 

surfacing relative to the topic. Employees can vote on 

ideas in the Forum resulting in the most highly rated idea 

(based on the greatest number of yes votes) rising to the 

top of the list. Employees are encouraged to enter into 

discussions and participate regularly in Forum discussions.

OpenED Forum can be accessed from connectED, the 

Department’s Intranet web site.

To date, 1,124 employees (approximately 25 percent of ED 

employees) have logged into OpenED Forum accumulating 

a total of 8,519 visits to the site since its inception. 

Currently, the Forum contains eight topics for discussion 

that have generated approximately 250 new ideas, 

producing 195 sublevel discussions about these ideas. 

One topic alone received 62 new ideas, generating 72 

sublevel postings. To date all ideas have been reviewed,

59 ideas were approved to send forward to ED senior 

leaders for their approval and next steps. Senior leaders 

provided responses to 25 ideas to date. These responses 

are posted online in OpenED Forum and on ConnectED.
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Sustainable governance structure:

To sustain and manage all operations of the OpenED 

Forum, PPSS staff created a partnership between PPSS 

(OPEPD) and OS and set up a Steering Committee of staff 

representing both offices. PPSS staff run operations of 

OpenED Forum and OS staff provide leadership and input 

on operations.

The Steering Committee established a reading committee 

for the purpose of reviewing the hundreds of ideas 

submitted to the Forum.

The Reading Committee:

The OpenED Forum Reading Committee reviews and 

manages the evaluation process of Forum postings for the 

purpose of determining what ideas are beneficial that may 

improve or enhance the work of the Department. The 

Committee connects with the OpenED Steering Committee 

throughout the review process to ensure concurrence 

between both Committees and adherence to the goals of 

OpenED Forum. 

The Reading Committee consists of 7 members with 6 

members selected from three different principal offices. 

Each principal office designates a manager and nonmanager staff member to represent their office. This 

“mixed” membership provides a balance between levels of 

leadership within the Department. The Reading 

Committee serves for a period of six months after which a 

new group of representatives from three other Principal 

Operating Components (POCs) are designated to serve.

Steering Committee’s Role in the Idea Review:

The Steering Committee determines the three POC’s that 

will be asked to designate staff to work as the Reading 

Committee for a period of six months. The Steering 

Committee reviews the work of the Reading Committee 

including its recommendations and POC reviews of ideas 

considered for implementation. The Steering Committee 

determines what ideas will be implemented and sends their 
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recommendation to the Chief of Staff for approval. For 

each idea implemented, the Steering Committee is 

responsible for ensuring that the ED employee who 

generated the original idea receives recognition by ED 

leadership. 

PPSS staff on the Steering Committee represents ED at the 

government-wide ideation community run by the Assistant 

Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Office of Science and 

Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. 

PPSS staff responds to emails and calls from employees 

across ED related to the OpenED initiative. The Steering 

Committee coordinates all ED-wide communications for 

OpenED and advertises regularly to encourage 

participation.

D. Improving Internal Processes

1. Public Notifications

The Department of Education notifies the public of important 

events and information updates via its web site and other 

social media tools. Below is a description of the tools currently

in use:

 Electronic newsletters – ED has multiple periodic electronic 

newsletters that inform parents, teachers, education 

stakeholders and other members. These electronic 

newsletters are open to the public via ED’s opt-in policy in 

which subscribers may stop delivery at any time. EDInfo, 

ED Review, Education Innovator, IESNEws, Research eNews, Thursdays Notes, Touching Base and PreventionED 

are the currently available newsletters, and ED will 

continue to create newsletters as new special topics are 

indentified. For more information on ED’s electronic 

newsletters, please visit: 

http://www.ed.gov/news/newsletters/.

 ED.gov “Blog” – The ED.gov Blog is a primary tool for the 

Department of Education to publish and promote up-to-
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date information on agency and secretary events and news 

headlines. In addition to publishing information, the blog 

also allows for inclusion of videos, opportunities for public 

commenting and electronic subscription via Really Simple 

Syndication (RSS) features found in third-party blog 

reading software. ED plans on extending its blog tools to 

other offices within the Department. The main ED.gov 

blog can be found at: http://www.ed.gov/blog/.

 Media releases – Frequently throughout the day, the 

Department of Education releases newsworthy items via its 

electronic press room. This section of ed.gov features 

press releases, speeches, media advisories and the 

Secretary’s weekly schedule. ED’s Press Room is located 

at: http://www.ed.gov/news/landing.jhtml .

 Federal Register – The Department of Education frequently 

publishes proposed and final regulations, announcements 

and other documents in the Federal Register database 

maintained by the Government Printing Office. ED updates 

its web site to provide a listing of Federal Register notices 

as well as provides a search capability. ED’s Federal 

Register page is available at: 

http://www.ed.gov/news/fedregister/

 Twitter – Twitter is an online social network tool that sends 

status updates to subscribers. ED uses Twitter daily to 

send important updates of Department activities. The 

main ED Twitter feed is available at 

http://twitter.com/usedgov and others listed at 

http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/socialmedia.html.

 Facebook – Facebook is another online social network tool 

which ED uses to send updates to subscribers. Facebook is 

used daily to send important Department and Secretary

updates. The main ED Facebook page is 

http://www.facebook.com/ED.gov and others are available 

at http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/socialmedia.html.
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 YouTube – YouTube is a video sharing service which ED 

uses to distribute audio/video clips. ED’s YouTube channel 

features taped stakeholder meetings, messages from 

senior officials and other special topic features. The 

YouTube channel for Education can be found at 

http://www.youtube.com/usedgov.

 FedBizOpps.gov – ED posts synopses of proposed contract 

actions as well as contract solicitations on FedBizOpps.gov, 

which is the single point on the Internet where vendors 

can access information needed to bid on government 

contracts. Vendors wishing to do business with ED may 

view synopses and download solicitations that they are 

interested in bidding on.

2. Records Management for National Archiving

The Records Management and Privacy Division is 

responsible for developing and implementing strategies 

and programs designed to ensure compliance with federal 

information management requirements

In performing its responsibilities, the Division:

• Serves as the Department’s principal authority and 

representative on records management statutory, 

regulatory and policy requirements to assure 

compliance with National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA) directives. 

• Serves as the Department’s primary liaison with OMB 

and other agencies on inter-agency privacy safeguard 

and breach notification initiatives. 

• Develops clear and consistent business rules 

(standards) for records management; administrative 

safeguards for protecting personally identifiable 

information; and risk-based information breach 

notification actions. 
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• Provides guidance and instruction to Department staff 

for the appropriate handling, maintenance, and 

disposition of records. 

• Provides guidance and instruction to Department staff 

regarding processes and procedures that protect 

personally identifiable information from improper 

disclosure, including information retained Privacy Act 

Systems of Records (SORs) and information safeguarded by the requirements of Section 208 of the EGovernment Act of 2002.

• Develops and provides print and web-based training to 

Department employees and contractors regarding the 

unit's mission. 

• Oversees the implementation and management of 

Department-wide systems and databases that support 

the successful and efficient handling of records and 

privacy safeguards administration. 

• Coordinates inter-agency development, review and 

approval of Computer Matching Agreements (CMAs) in 

support of the Department’s Data Integrity Board. 

Information is available online at Regulatory Information 

Management Services.

3. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 

Administration

In addition to publicizing the President’s FOIA 

Memorandum and Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines, the 

Department of Education has taken many steps to ensure 

a presumption of openness is applied to all decisions 

involving the FOIA by increasing awareness through 

training, proactive and discretionary release of records and 

increasing efficiency. 

Increasing Awareness through Training: The Department 

of Education is developing a FOIA Training Curriculum with 

modules focused on the various groups of employees and 
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their specific responsibility for administering the FOIA, i.e.,

Program Office FOIA Coordinators, FOIA Public Liaisons, 

new employees, and managers. 

1) The “FOIA Overview Module,” the first module in 

the series, will provide basic information about 

the FOIA such as the FOIA’s purpose, guidelines, 

exemptions, searches, and internal processes. 

The goal is for the module to be disseminated to 

new employees upon entry, and to all Department 

employees, electronically, on an annual basis.

2) The development of the modules is in progress 

and the “FOIA Overview” is expected to roll out

before the end of the fiscal year.

Developing Processes for Proactive and Discretionary 

Releases of Records: The Department of Education has 

developed processes for proactive and discretionary 

releases of records. The Department has defined 

“proactive release” as the release of information in 

advance of a FOIA request; and defined “discretionary 

release” as the release of information which legally can be 

withheld but which the Department has decided, within its 

discretion, to release.

The Department is identifying types of documents that 

have been requested in previous years and now 

proactively releases responsive documents into the public 

domain via the FOIA e-Reading Room, in advance of 

receiving a FOIA request. Annually, the Department 

receives more than 700 requests for contracts, grant 

applications, and information about federally funded 

programs to include ARRA related documents. The 

Department’s FOIA Service Center consults with senior 

agency personnel, including the Office of Legislation and 

Congressional Affairs, Office of Communication & 

Outreach, Contracts & Acquisitions Management, Office of 

General Counsel and relevant subject matter experts to 

identify material for proactive release and in concert with 

the Office of the Chief Information Officer to get these 
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types of documents published in the FOIA e-Reading 

Room.

In response to the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines, the 

Department, through its two-level review process, works 

to ensure that a foreseeable harm is linked to any 

information falling within the scope of a discretionary 

exemption and if no harm is found—or the Department 

determines that the information may otherwise be 

released—the information is discretionarily released. 

Implementing a two-level quality review of documents not 

fully-released: The Department conducts at least a twolevel review of documents that are deemed NOT fully 

releasable. During this second review, special attention is 

focused on ensuring a foreseeable harm has been 

established and segregated information is released. The 

two-level review is believed to significantly decrease the 

number of administrative appeals. 

Populating the FOIA e-Reading Room in a manner to 

ensure rapid distribution of information: The Department 

populates the FOIA e-Reading Room with frequently 

requested documents, proactively released documents, 

and discretionarily released documents. Additionally, the 

Department is providing access to these types of 

documents and others, using hyperlinks, located in the eReading Room, to lead requesters directly to program 

offices’ web sites making it easier for the public to locate 

information. 

The Department of Education’s FOIA Service Center has 

taken steps to ensure that the system it uses for 

responding to requests is effective and efficient. The FOIA 

Service Center has addressed the key roles played by the 

broad spectrum of agency personnel who work with FOIA 

professionals by:

• Reviewing FOIA Policy: After a review of internal and 

external policies, procedures, and workload, the 

Department determined its FOIA regulation and agency 

directive both need updating. The update will 
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promulgate streamlined processes to eliminate 

unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, provide mandatory 

requirements for program allocation of resource levels 

to fulfill the FOIA workload, and establish mandatory 

participation in training/meetings for FOIA 

professionals. The regulation is in the final stages of 

approval, and the FOIA Directive is expected to be 

issued for Departmental clearance before the end of the 

fiscal year.

• Evaluating the Agency’s FOIA case management 

workflow system/procedures: The Department 

currently uses a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) case 

management and workflow system with many features 

and benefits. In an effort to ensure that the system for 

responding to requests is effective and efficient, the 

Department evaluated its use of various features. The 

Department found that the use of features, such as the 

redaction tool and electronic document file cabinet, has 

transformed the work of FOIA processing from paper, 

manual labor and needlessly repetitive tasks, to 

automated processes commanded by menus and icons. 

The Department system electronically stores, retrieves, 

redacts, and prints documents for delivery to FOIA 

requesters. It also keeps track of FOIA processing 

statistics and fees, and generates reports on the 

number, type, and disposition of FOIA requests 

processed. The Department has augmented technology 

and contractor support to achieve improvements at the 

processing level.

• Identifying a FOIA IT contact within the FOIA Service 

Center: In an effort to ensure FOIA professionals have 

sufficient IT support for the FOIA case management 

system, a FOIA Public Liaison has been designated as 

the IT administrator for the case management workflow 

system. Instead of calling the Department’s “Help 

Desk,” for IT support, FOIA Coordinators are able to 

resolve most electronic FOIA issues through a single 

point of contact by calling the FOIA Service Center’s 

Hotline number.
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The Department’s key FOIA processing metrics, the 2009 

FOIA Annual Report, is posted on the Department’s FOIA 

Homepage along with various other FOIA resources at: 

http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/foia/foiatoc.html. The 

2009 Annual Report is posted in machine-readable format 

as required by the Open Government Directive. 

Additionally, in concert with the Office of the Chief 

Information Officer, the Department ensures its FOIA web 

site is updated with many other user-friendly documents 

as well as links to each program offices’ FOIA e-Reading 

Rooms. 

The Department has a backlog. However, there is a 

reduction in the total number of backlog cases since the 

end of FY 2009. Below is a chart that shows the backlog 

requests and administrative appeals that remain pending 

at the end of the fiscal year and what is held currently in 

terms of age:

FY FOIA 

Requests 

(overdue)

Age-FOIA 

Request

(average 

days)

FOIA 

Appeals 

(overdue)

Age-Appeal

(average days)

2009 419 58 28 85

2010* 404* 23* 24* 63*

 *year to date

The Department of Education shows a 12 percent increase in the 

number of requests where records have been released in full 

when compared with the previous year’s Annual Report. In 

2009, 720 records were released in full compared to 644 in 

2008; 32 percent of requests received were released in full. 

However, in 2009, 859 records were released in part compared 

to 1,029 in 2008, which indicates a 17 percent decrease in the 

number of requests partially released. 
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The Department of Education is taking at least three steps to 

improve timeliness in responding to requests and to 

administrative appeals by:

Improving FOIA Intake procedures: The Department’s FOIA 

Service Center has created standard operating procedures to 

ensure, at Intake, that only perfected requests are sent to a 

program office for search and processing; requests are assigned 

and electronically sent to the correct program office; and a 

target date is issued for when the case should be completed. 

Determinations regarding requests for fee waivers and expedited 

processing are made and communicated to the requesters by the 

Intake Team and issues are resolved before the case is assigned 

to a program office. 

Creating access to documents in advance of receiving FOIA 

requests: The Department’s FOIA Service Center assists program 

offices with populating the FOIA e-Reading Room with frequently 

requested documents, proactively released documents, and 

discretionarily released documents. The Department is providing 

access to these types of documents using hyperlinks, located in 

the e-Reading Room, to lead requesters directly to program 

offices’ web sites making it easier for the public to locate 

information.

Increase Awareness of Department’s response to FOIA: 

Monthly, the Department’s FOIA Service Center disseminates a 

Department-wide monthly report of overdue cases. Since many 

program offices use their own FOIA tracking mechanisms, the 

dissemination of this report provides an opportunity to ensure 

the integrity of the data within the case management workflow 

system. The report highlights the Department’s total number of 

overdue cases, overdue by program office, number of days, 

average age and median age. Additionally, the FOIA Service 

Center conducts bi-weekly appeals meetings to ensure new 

appeals are acknowledged, tracked, and requirements for 

documentation are forwarded to the Office of General Counsel 

for review, i.e. documentation of search, justification for 

withholding, etc.
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The Department of Education is committed to assisting with the 

new Office of Government Information Services’ FOIA mediation 

efforts.

4. Congressional Requests for Information

The Department of Education's Office of Legislation and 

Congressional Affairs (OLCA) has a wide range of 

responsibilities, the most important of which is 

coordinating all Department matters relating to Congress. 

OLCA has a leadership role in planning, developing, and 

implementing the Department's legislative goals and 

strategies, notifying Congressional offices of grant awards 

and Department initiatives, addressing appropriations and 

budget matters, and monitoring the status of legislative 

proposals. 

OLCA's organizational structure consists of political 

leadership that communicates the Administration's position 

on educational issues, career staff for legislative policy that 

advises on legislation, and congressional affairs staff that 

aid in resolving constituent concerns. 

OLCA also works with employees throughout the 

Department to respond to written and oral inquiries from 

individual members of Congress, prepare for legislative 

hearings, and schedule and facilitate meetings between 

members of Congress and ED senior officers. 

The inquiries that are received by OLCA are tracked 

through the Department's correspondence control system. 

For each issue submitted through a congressional inquiry, 

it is assigned to the appropriate principal office within the 

Department for response. Congressional inquiries are 

typically responded to within three to four weeks 

depending on the complexity of the inquiry. 

Congressional Members can contact the office through 

OLCA's main telephone line(s) at 202-401-1028 or 202-

401-0020. Electronic mail can be submitted to 
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olca@ed.gov. Correspondence can also be mailed to 400 

Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, D.C. 20202-3100. 

OLCA is in daily contact with members of Congress. This 

interaction ensures that the initiatives of Congress and the 

Department are achieved. (About Office of Legislation and 

Congressional Affairs )

IV. ED Roadmap for Incorporating Principles of 

Openness into Core Agency Missions

Building on the solid foundation put in place during this inaugural year 

of Open Government, we will not stop here. Our next steps will shore 

up this foundation and address sustainability by (1) institutionalizing 

Open Government practices with standards and procedures to ensure 

that these principles are adopted across the agency, and (2) ensuring 

that the Open Government Plan continues to be strategically aligned 

with the Agency’s mission as our strategic plan evolves and we work 

with Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education 

Act.

1. Institutionalize core principles across ED: As the smallest Cabinetlevel agency with just 4,100 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, but the 

fourth largest as measured by funding appropriation, the majority 

of the Department’s resources are appropriately dedicated to the 

program offices. These program office resources oversee grant 

programs which means that central support staff resources are 

limited. For Open Government to fully succeed at ED, the practices 

developed over the past year must be internalized and 

institutionalized at the program office level. Over the next year, ED 

will:

a. Develop guiding standards for grant application transparency 

that can be applied across programs. Every grant program is 

different, but all should be subject to transparency principles. 
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ED has set a new standard for end-to-end transparency over the 

last year. We posted initial and approved applications for the 

State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and School Improvement Fund, 

peer reviewer comments, as well as the scores for Race to the 

Top applications. These programs invited state-level 

participants, so the number of applications is relatively low. 

Over the next few months, the Department will begin two 

different but equally high-profile ARRA competitions - the 

Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) and the revamped Teacher 

Incentive Fund (TIF). We expect over 3000 applications for the 

Investing in Innovation Fund and this large number of 

applications will require the Department to evaluate and use a 

different approach to achieve transparency on this scale. After 

gaining experience applying transparency principles to these 

diverse programs, the Department will develop a consistent set 

of standards to implement across all grant programs, and 

communicate best practices to aid in effective execution of those 

standards. Our timeline is as follows.

o April – develop transparency policy for i3

o May-June – develop transparency policy for TIF

o September – publish competition results for both i3 and 

TIF 

o Oct – Dec 2010 – develop ED guiding standards and 

procedures for competitive grant transparency, provide 

examples of Best Practices representing the range of 

approaches for achieving transparency for different types 

of grants

b. Develop guiding standards for financial transparency that can be 

applied across programs. ED has provided significant 

transparency into the flow of ARRA education grants to States 

through weekly agency reporting and quarterly recipient 

reporting. To further deliver transparency into state use of ED 
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funding, this level of reporting will be applied to non-ARRA 

programs on an on-going basis. Over the coming year, ED will 

develop user-friendly approaches, similar to the current ARRA 

weekly spending reports aggregated by state and by program, to 

presenting the State and Program level funding already available 

on USASpending.gov at a granular level similar. In addition, the 

implementation of FFATA sub-award reporting will provide ED 

with a new and more detailed source of transparency into the 

flow of funds. When this information becomes available, ED will 

work to aggregate this information in a format meaningful to ED 

stakeholders, similar to the current quarterly ARRA Section 1512 

reports posted on ED.gov. Our timeline is as follows.

o Oct – Dec 2010 Program spending report systems 

developed and tested

o Oct – June 2011 FFATA sub-award reporting procedures 

developed and implemented 

o July 2011 - Dec 2011 FFATA sub-award reports developed 

and tested 

c. Develop procedures for updating Web content at the office, 

initiative, and program level. ED's current web design and 

content management workflow are barriers to effective use of 

the web for many ED offices, initiatives, and programs. These 

barriers are, in turn, barriers to open government. We aim to 

lower these barriers through the adoption of a streamlined 

approach to content management, using Drupal, and more 

flexible templates for web pages. It will be easier for offices, 

initiatives, and programs to post web content quickly and display 

it more flexibly to meet their needs and their stakeholders' 

needs. As a result, we expect to see more effective use of the 

web spread throughout our agency. As this system is 

implemented, we expect to see offices, initiatives, and programs 

posting news, information about upcoming competitions and 

workshops, slideshows from technical assistance workshops, 
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schedules of upcoming events, and more. They will be able to 

engage with citizens and stakeholders. To optimize execution of 

this significant change, ED will take a phased approach, piloting 

the program in a limited number of offices, then phasing it in 

gradually, integrating learning with each successive 

implementation. 

Our timeline is as follows.

o May - Aug 2010: Pilot program Drupal transition 

o Sep - Dec 2010: Phased transition to offices and 

initiatives

o May - Jun 2011: Drupal available to all offices 

and initiatives

o Sep - Dec 2011: Drupal (or alternative) available 

to all programs

d. Rationalize program content sources. ED currently supports 

both an annual paper published source of program information 

(the Guide to Education Programs) and real-time, web-based 

source of program information. This dual system is inefficient 

and increases the risk of outdated information, threatening 

transparency. Assuming resources are approved to fund this 

project, ED will integrate these two programs in 2011.

o July - Sep 2010 Integration funding requested

o Oct - Mar 2011 Integration project underway

a. Address Regulatory/Statutory Challenges Affecting Open 

Government: Data Governance, including security, privacy 

policy and IT Investment Management, is guided by a complex 
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combination of laws, regulations, and directives that affect 

multiple levels of government, institutions, and organizations. 

The Department takes these requirements seriously and has 

mature, operating governance structures that place controls over 

all technology used to implement these initiatives. We will 

augment existing governance structures to address new 

challenges resulting from inconsistencies between the many 

regulations affecting rule-making and the realities of social 

networking and 21st century technology. ED will convene a 

working group including OGC, OCIO and core program offices to 

work with OMB OIRA to develop a consistent approach to these 

issues at both the Agency and Federal level.

o July - Sep 2010 Working Group membership and charter 

defined

o Sep - Dec 2010 Preliminary solutions identified

o Jan - Jun 2011 Final recommendation and implementation

2. Ensure Strategic Alignment: ED is currently at a pivotal point in its 

history. With unprecedented sources of funding through ARRA we 

are executing groundbreaking competitions including Race to the 

Top, School Improvement Grants, Investing in Innovation Fund, 

and Teacher Incentive Fund. We have proposed significant changes 

to ESEA, our largest appropriation driving many of our core 

programs. ED’s strategies will be fine-tuned as we gain experience 

with these new programs, and the final structure of ESEA will have 

significant implications for our Flagship Initiative. ED recommends 

that this Open Government Plan be viewed as a living document, 

continually subject to change as we gain experience with the 

principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, and as 

the Agency’s core principles evolve with continued strategic 

planning and ESEA reauthorization.
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o Jul - Sep 2010 Review 2011 S&A budget to ensure consistency 

with Open Government Plan

o Sep 2010 Review current Open Government Plan to align with 

final ED Strategic Plan and ESEA reauthorization status 

o Oct - Dec 2010 Finalize objectives of Flagship Initiative 
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Institutionalize Grant Award Transparency

Institutionalize Financial Transparency
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Simplify Web Content Update Procedures

Rationalize Program Content Sources
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Address Data Governance Regulatory / Statutory Issues

Ensure Strategic Alignment
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V. CONCLUSION

At the U.S. Department of Education, we view transparency, 

participation and collaboration as vital to the success of our mission to 

improve the quality and accessibility of education in the United States.

These are goals in and of themselves, inasmuch as we understand 

clearly that our stakeholders deserve an education agency that serves 

the people as efficiently, openly, honestly and collaboratively as 

possible.

In writing this plan, we have addressed the requirements of the 

President and his staff for developing an Open Government Plan for 

the Department. While doing this, we have uncovered some challenges 

to transparency, participation and collaboration. Some of these 

impediments are of our own doing (e.g., cumbersome data 

management and technology processes); others are not (e.g., complex 

legal and regulatory processes that bind and limit the exercise of our 

legal authorities). These represent challenges to the process of 

governing, and we at the Department are now (thanks to the process 

initiated by the Open Government Directive) fully engaged and 

committed to managing, regulating and governing over, under, around 

and through the impediments that hinder our ability to serve the 

nation.

Transparency, participation and collaboration are the keys to unlocking 

the constraints that hinder our ability to serve citizens better. Applying 

these values to our business of supporting the education community 

will enable the Department to institutionalize transparency, 

participation and collaboration; in effect, we will write these values on 

the “DNA” of our institutional culture, memory and knowledge. By 

doing this, we believe we will be laying the groundwork for 
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transforming the Department to meet the requirements of the

President and the needs of the people.

We look forward to the public’s feedback on how to improve our Open 

Government Plan. The Plan is still developing, and it will be improved 

significantly by citizens’ suggestions. We welcome thoughts on this 

Plan. To provide comments, please visit our Open Government Web 

site at (www.ed.gov/open) or send us an email at opengov@ed.gov. 

We also welcome specific questions and we will do our best to respond 

as quickly and thoughtfully as possible. Please understand that this 

Plan is just the first step in bringing transparency, participation and 

collaboration to the U.S. Department of Education; we look forward to 

taking additional steps with citizen input and support and we intend to 

take citizens’ comments into account when updating this Plan.