Transparency

There are many elements of HHS business operations, programs, services, and policies that are critical to supporting the mission of each agency.  In this section, we identify plans that are underway to support greater awareness about our operations through increased availability of data, enhanced tools and communications to disseminate our data, and to provide greater context and understanding about the meaning of our data.

While these efforts are organizationally associated with individual programmatic and agency specific functions, all of these activities relate to greater transparency and public understanding.  Our efforts through this plan are to present a composite of these activities and draw general themes and directions that provide the public with an improved experience at using government data and information resources to benefit them.

The HHS Strategic Plan for 2010-2015 includes key aspects of organizational objectives to address transparency.  Goal 4 of our Strategic Plan seeks to Increase Efficiency, Transparency and Accountability of HHS Programs and specifically includes objectives that emphasize the use HHS data to improve the health and well-being of the American people, and ensure program integrity and responsible stewardship of resources.

Specific Activities to Promote Transparency

HHS programs support and maintain vast databases of a wide array of activities from research, program management, health and human services delivery, training and education, and many more.  Through the Health Data Initiative, substantial efforts have been made to provide greater ease of access to data resources, increase the amount of data that is being made available, and a wide array of activities to promote its use through innovative programs and projects.  Provided here are narrative summaries of a few ways that data resources and tools will be enhanced to support transparency and understanding of HHS data resources.