White House CIO & CTO Launching Open Government Plan live online at 11AM ET

There is very little groc-ing of these types of efforts on that level because by and large the federal government outsourced all it's IT years ago. The people that run the show at these levels are by and large print journalism people with little experience with the web - much less the open web. They are used to completing a project and getting a "web page" set up for it by simply tasking a contractor to turn a PDF brochure into a web site.

The contractors are set up to act as worker bees rather than consultants and there are very few feds at the middle management level that have an understanding of the underlying technologies to innovate in this area without help. The CTO's office is trying to set up models to follow and help the ideas permeate the civilian workforce.

I think a lot of people think the slowness is Government was caused by technologically backwards administrations and that now things are going to be different. My point is even when you have a President that uses a Blackberry and knows what a dataset is Government still takes forever to get things done.