On September 23, President Obama spoke before the UN General Assembly highlighting his administrations’ open government initiatives and continuing commitment to transparency and open governance globally. Click here to read President Obama’s speech.

Here is a brief summary of the success of these initiatives, adapted from the Fact Sheet: U.S. Support for Open Government available on The White House website:

• Data.gov has democratized access to data, with hundreds of thousands of datasets in a common format housed in a central location. Approximately 270,000 datasets have been posted, providing the public with unprecedented transparency about such diverse matters as automobile safety, air travel, air quality, workplace safety, drug safety, nutrition, crime, obesity, the employment market, and health care.

• Numerous dashboards – from information technology (IT) to health care to forthcoming regulations – now give the public information with which they can hold both private and public institutions accountable. Through Recovery.gov and the information technology dashboard, the public can track how and where Recovery Act funds are spent, down to specific zip codes.

• About 30 agencies have developed Open Government web pages and Open Government Plans, announcing new steps to disclose information that has never been public before and new ways to encourage public participation in agency activities.

• The SAVE (Securing Americans’ Value and Efficiency) Award, allowed Federal employees to submit ideas on how to make government more efficient and effective. The Administration has also launched Challenge.gov to enable all government agencies to tap the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people and collaborate to solve our nation’s problems. • The White House has established a clear presumption in favor of openness by posting visitor records, staff financial disclosures, salaries, and ethics waivers on the White House website for the first time and by reversing prior limits on access to presidential records and ordering Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reform. The Department of Justice’s FOIA dashboard will enable users to assess FOIA compliance across 92 Federal agencies and over time. We are also holding ourselves accountable by putting Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), and stimulus lobbying records online.