Introduction
The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) Open Government Plan is a public roadmap detailing current practices that incorporate the principles of the President's January 21, 2009, Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government into the agency's core mission objectives, and the strategy to advance such practices in the future. The Open Government Directive emphasizes the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration; together forming the cornerstone of an open government.
- Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing.
- Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society.
- Collaboration improves the effectiveness of Government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the Federal Government, across levels of government, and between the Government and private institutions.
The RRB participates in a wide-range of government-wide transparency initiatives. During FY 2009, a series of documents outlining the RRB's implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was developed and published to the www.recovery.gov website. ARRA-related documents as well as background on RRB benefit programs were published to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance www.cfda.gov website and to the RRB's website at www.rrb.gov. Five data sets containing railroad employment data were published to www.data.gov. The RRB also provides input to the General Services Administration (GSA) through the Federal Procurement Data System www.FPDS.gov.