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May2l,20I0

The Honorable Susan Tsui Grundmann

Chairman

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board

1615 M Street, NW

Washington, DC 20419-0002

Dear Ms. Grundmann,

Max Stier, President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service asked me to respond to your

letter of April27,2010 inviting the Partnership's comments on the Merit System Protection Board's

(MSPB's) Open Government Plan. I have carefully reviewed the Plan and I have also reviewed the

MSPB website at www.mspb.gov; your Open Government webpage at www.mspb.gov/open; and

the 3 data sets posted on www.data.gov. I am pleased to offer the following comments.

1. The February 24,2010 "refresh" of the MSPB's primary public website (www.mspb.gov)

referenced on page 5 ofyour plan does provide the benefits noted in the plan and it represents a

noticeable improvement over the previous website. For example, having all of the MSPB's

Annual Reports, the current strategic plan, and the Performance and Accountability Reports

under an "Agency Plans and Reports" tab makes locating these useful documents much easier

than before. Likewise, quick links to the MSPB's own annual employee survey data is

welcomed as is the new layout for the MSPB Studies page. Kudos to the responsible MSPB

staff for these improvements.

2. Unfortunately, as of May 2I,2010, the files available on MSPB's Open Government

webpage-which are the same as those at www.data.gov do not open in a readable format (e.g.,

Excel, Word, or PDF) for the average user. I'm not sure who the intended audience is for these

data files and it's possible that they were loaded in a format other than that which was intended.

In any case, they are currently not useful to a non-technical audience who may be interested in

the data.

3. The timeliness of the datathat is available in other more user-friendly formats such as the

annual reports and the excellent MSPB studies is also an issue and a potential obstacle to

fulfilling the goals of the President's Open Govemment initiative. For example, among the

most useful data in the annual reports consists of the case processing statistics (e.g., tables 1

through 6 in the Annual Report for FY 2008, dated November 17,2008). However, those data
are now over two years old and if a more recent analysis exists, I was unable to locate it.

Similarly, the very well written and analyzedMsPB report, 'oFair and Equitable Treatment:

Progress Made and Challenges Remaining," dated December 1,2009 was based on federal

employee survey data collected in CY 2007 - two years prior to the release of the report. As a

former Director of MSPB's Office of Policy and Evaluation, I fully understand the difficulty of

collecting and quickly analyzingthe type of data represented in this report with the limited

resources available to MSPB. However, in the fast moving and rapidly changing work

environment of the federal government today, datathat are over two years old lose value. It

may be that some of the datathat I am unable to access on www.mspb.gov/open are more up to

day and once any technical issues are ironed out, that will help. It may also be possible to

provide an initial set of data shortly after it is available followed by a more detailed analysis

some months later.

4. In light of my comments in item 3, I would also suggest that you consider changing one

measure of success for MSPB's Open Govemment Initiative, i.e., item 9 D on page 14 of your

Open Government plan. That measure currently counts success as "the extent to which the

MSPB publishes data within 30 days after the information is approved for release." I suggest

that a more relevant goal would be the publication of data within 120 days after it is collected!

I know that this is an ambitious goal but it is achievable even though it may require providing

more staff resources to accomplish it. I note, for example, that the U.S. Office of Personnel

Management has recently announced plans to conduct its "employee viewpoint survey" on an

annual basis. The data from the most recent OPM survey which was administered to over

400,000 federal employees in February and March 2010 is due to be released to the public on

July 9, 2010 - less than 120 days after the suvey was completed.

I hope you f,rnd these comments useful. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help in any

way.

W^l¿dt óhn M. Palguta

Vice President for Policy

Sincerely,