As you may or may not have heard, my successor, if you will, the new United States deputy chief technology officer, with focus now on public sector innovation and open government, is actually the former CIO of the city and county of San Francisco. He has been one of the leaders in the municipal open government movement. He is one of the convenors of--I've forgotten the acronym; there are too many acronyms and not enough time in government--a new organization for global municipal e-government where cities around the world are now convening.
Some of the best innovations are actually coming at the municipal level as well as at the state level. New York State, where I'm at home, announced an open New York plan. The Senate of New York created the first citizen commenting tool for commenting on legislation at the state level prior to its enactment. There is a lot of work that is really bubbling up at the state and local levels.
In particular, I participate in a bi-weekly conference call on municipal open government, just to keep track of it. Every two weeks someone new is added to it. We report to one another on some of the initiatives that are going on at the local, state, or the .org levels in service of municipal-level and state-level open government.
There are also grants and new funding programs, both from companies as well as from the federal government, to try to promote innovation in governance at the local and state levels. ONB has some money in back of that. IBM has something like a $50 million prize purse for the City Forward initiative that it's investing in in local-level and state-level open government efforts.
If anything, whereas the President's day-one memo kicked it all off, you're seeing more activity happening at the local and state levels faster around the world than even at the federal level.