FCA and the Open Gov Initiative
In January 2009, the White House introduced the Open Government Initiative to encourage greater transparency, participation, and collaboration in government. As a result, FCA, like other departments and agencies throughout the federal government, is looking for ways to ensure that it is as transparent as possible without violating privacy or confidentiality or compromising security. We are also looking at ways to facilitate greater participation and collaboration. For assistance, we turn to you, the public, to help us identify how we can improve.
Also, in accordance with the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, we have designated a chief data officer for the agency. His name is Jeremy D’Antoni, and you can reach him at [email protected]. To submit a request for data, please visit FCA's FOIA page or FOIA.gov, or contact [email protected].
FCA data governance
The FCA Data Advisory Group is the principal internal agency forum for addressing data management standards, priorities, policies, and practices. The group coordinates and facilitates implementation of agency-wide processes and standards and addresses common issues affecting FCA office data programs and resources. The agency’s chief data officer serves as chair of the group, which meets at least quarterly and includes leaders from across the agency. For more information, see the group’s charter (PDF).
Here’s what we offer now
Currently, you can find many valuable reports and data sets on our website.
- From reports & publications, you can find such documents as our most recent budget (PDF), our performance and accountability reports, and our strategic plan (PDF).
- From bank & association oversight, you can find information about the Farm Credit System (FCS), which it is our mission to regulate. Included on this page are links to the System’s quarterly financial indicators, as well as to quarterly data that each institution submits to FCA through FCS call reports.
- From the guidance page, you can find guidance that we’ve provided to help the System comply with all laws and regulations and to meet its congressional mission.
- From the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) homepage, you can find all FOIA annual reports published since 2000, as well as the Chief FOIA Officer Report to the Department of Justice Pursuant to Attorney General Holder's FOIA Guidelines.
If the preceding pages do not contain the information you seek, you can go to the FOIA homepage and submit a request for access to the information you would like.
We encourage public participation in our rulemaking
To promote public participation in the rulemaking process, we post notices on our homepage under latest updates each time we issue a notice for public comments in the Federal Register. We also provide easy access to all pending regulations from our FCA pending regulations & notices page.
In addition, we periodically review our regulations to identify rules that are obsolete, unnecessary, unjustified, excessively burdensome, or counterproductive; and we seek input from the public in identifying such rules. See our Plan for Retrospective Analysis of Existing Rules (PDF) to learn more about how we conduct this review and how we encourage members of the public to participate in the process.
We use plain writing to increase transparency
An important part of transparency is ensuring that information provided to the public is easy to understand. To improve the clarity of government writing, Congress passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010. See Plain writing at FCA to learn how FCA is working to comply with the Act and to ensure that the materials it issues are clear and reader-friendly.
We use digital tools to increase transparency
We use a variety of digital tools to reach out to our stakeholders. We have solicited input through website customer satisfaction surveys. We also solicit comments on regulatory actions through our website. For more information about the digital strategies we are using and plan to use, see Digital strategy at FCA.
Tell us what we can do better
If the resources outlined above still fail to meet your information needs, please let us know. We’d also like to hear your ideas for improving participation and collaboration at FCA. Give us your feedback. Let us know how we can serve you better. Write to us at [email protected]. Your input will be most appreciated.