DHS Open Government Dialogue 03-09-10

With only ten more days to go on this chance to provide suggestions for DHS to use to make their services more responsible and transparent to the public, the participation rate in the DHS Open Government Dialogue has slowed to the proverbial crawl. Two weeks ago when I last posted about this site, there were 81 Ideas and 109 Off-Topic Ideas. Today there are only 31 more Ideas. And there aren’t many new votes on Ideas that I’m tracking. The main reason that I haven’t written more often is that there still isn’t much showing up on the site that will be of much interest to the chemical security community. Actually there are lots of interesting ideas (and probably an equal number of ones that will elicit the ‘WHAT?” response); just none specifically of interest to our community. There is one recently posted Idea that I would like to solicit the support of the community for. Hugh. R. Griffiths suggested a reversal of the DHS Policy on Social Media. He cites the recent change in DOD policy allowing military personnel to access social media sites like Twitter and FaceBook via military computers; and suggest that DHS lighten up and do the same. Now I admit I have a crass personal reason for supporting this change. Like many professional bloggers I announce the posting of a new screed on Twitter (PJCoyle; pardon the shameless plug). This allows many of my readers to go to my blog when I have posted something of interest to them instead of bouncing in periodically just to see what’s going on. This is important for busy professionals. I know that I have a number of readers at DHS that might find this useful. So, go and give a ‘thumbs-up’ to this idea; he currently has 2 (one obviously from me). Tracking Others' Ideas There are three Ideas currently on this site that I have been kind of tracking because they will probably be of interest to the readers of this blog. Ed Clark’s Idea on Fed Fatigue is currently the highest rated of the bunch, coming in with a 19 Positive vote (this is actually currently number 8 on the list). Trailing a ways back is Tom Frock’s Idea on Port/Fuel Security with 7 votes. The third idea is actually tied with Tom’s. It comes from Steven Hopkins and proposes a Homeland Security Critical Infrastructure Watch Program. Tracking My Ideas If I can’t promote my own ideas on my blog, who will? I have posted two Ideas to date. The first was a suggestion that DHS provide Explanations for Delays in Rule Making Process; which currently has 9 positive votes. The latest Idea proposed the establishment of Public Security Reporting Tools for each of the DHS security programs; that currently has 8 positive votes. More Participation

With only ten days left until the site closes, it is time that we got more participation from our community. We need some more ideas for chemical security issues and we need more discussion of our community’s ideas already on the site. Let’s get some people out there and make sure that DHS hears the chemical security community.