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Early in his administration, President Obama vowed to open up government with more interactive online initiatives like Recovery.gov. Though some called his early efforts a "significant failure," Obama has pressed on with attempts to create transparency, including a memo earlier this year calling on government agencies to use challenges and prizes to promote open government. Today, the U.S. General Services Administration announced it has picked ChallengePost as its official platform to fulfill that need.

The US Office of Management and Budget issued new reporting guidelines this week for recipients of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the normally polite geek watchdog organization the Sunlight Foundation has come out swinging.

"...[A]bsent from the new instruction is a requirement to make raw data public," Sunlight's co-founder and Executive Director, Ellen Miller, wrote this morning. "By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure."