Open-government initiative marks two-year milestone

Two years ago, on his first day in office, President Barack Obama issued a memo aimed at making government operations more transparent. While open government advocates have largely panned the effort over what they call toothless policies, a regulatory compliance initiative is giving some of those critics new hope the administration's transparency objectives eventually might be realized. The new guidance, which is separate from an executive order on regulatory review released the same day, directs agencies to develop plans for making information about the enforcement of rules "accessible, downloadable and searchable online" within four months. White House officials then must pull those performance statistics into a central website that makes it easy for the public to compare agencies' records on compliance.