We have been watching recently as President Obama appointed Vivek Kundra the new federal CIO.  He was formerly in a similar position for the city of Washington, DC, and was touted for opening up Washingtonl, DC, to the people in innovative ways.  As such, much anticipation is being heaped on data.gov (see article on Slashdot and other transcripts of interviews), a new website which is touted as the place where any non-private, government data will be made available to the public.  We will be following this push closely.   

Wired magazine has a really interesting piece out on the topic of the opening up of government data.  While they are getting into a lot of territory which I am not familiar with, my concern has been the lack of will among government agencies (usually because of underlying statute) to share information that can help us to understand things like innovation and entrepreneurship.  Many countries have been able to set goals for data which serve research and policy functions.  While the Nordic countries have always been strong, recently, I have been impressed with Canada's modernization of their statistical infrastructure.  Change is possible.

Wired has gone a step further in setting up an Open Up Government Data wiki to track data which should be opened up for the benefit of society.  I wouldn't have thought of a wiki for this purpose but it's really quite interesting.