One of the first acts of the Obama presidency was to sign the "Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government," which instructed all members of the administration to operate under the principles of openness, transparency, and of engaging citizens with their government. The president issued the memo on his first day of office, unveiling it as he welcomed his senior staff and cabinet secretaries to the White House. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," announced President Obama.
This website, SmartGrid.gov, is one example of that transparency. Along with introducing people to the concept of the Smart Grid and outlining the federal initiatives underway to advance the Smart Grid, this site also documents the large federal investment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which itself was passed less than a month after President Obama took office.
Considering the size and speed of the Recovery Act investments, the Obama Administration is making every effort to provide up-to-date information on where the money went, how it is being used, and what benefits are being derived from these investments. Government websites provide a look at this data from a range of perspectives: while SmartGrid.gov focuses on Smart Grid investments made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the DOE website includes a Recovery Act section that summarizes all of DOE's Recovery Act investments, while a big-picture view of all the Recovery Act investments is provided by Recovery.gov.
But what if someone is unaware of SmartGrid.gov? How would they find critical government data related to energy production and consumption and on emerging clean energy technologies? The answer lies in the Open Energy Information website, or OpenEI (http://openei.org) for short. OpenEI is part of the Open Government Initiative, providing open access to energy data, including analyses on renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Sponsored by DOE and developed by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, OpenEI makes energy data transparent, participatory, and collaborative. To make it collaborative, the site is built as a Wiki, allowing users to edit and add data to the site, in the same way that the reference website Wikipedia functions.
Given the mission of OpenEI, it's no surprise that the Smart Grid section of the website focuses on DOE's Recovery Act investments, duplicating much of the information provided by SmartGrid.gov and the Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse. It also includes multiple links back to this website. But OpenEI also allows project participants to
