Built on pillars such as transparency, choice and interoperability, Microsoft's vision of Open Government evolved today with the unveiling of the Open Government Data Initiative. The Redmond-based company's declared goal for OGDI is to catalyze transparency and collaboration among governmental organizations in the U.S. In this context, the Microsoft Public Sector Developer Evangelism team put together the Open Government Data Initiative, leveraging the software giant's Cloud operating system, Windows Azure.

According to the company, a collection of software assets will be made available under the OGDI umbrella, allowing government agencies and developers to share, access and interact with data via the Azure Services Platform.

“Government organizations at every level are looking to the IT community to provide value, interoperability and choice as they strain to meet the tracking, reporting and engagement demands necessary to serve citizens,” explained Curt Kolcun, vice president of U.S. Public Sector at Microsoft. “Microsoft is helping customers connect the dots of information-sharing to bring open government to life - from extending the capabilities they already own to enabling secure, innovative transformation in the cloud.”

Microsoft published the source code for OGDI on CodePlex, and, in this regard, made it available to all developers as an open source project. In fact, the company is encouraging projects involving the implementation, reuse, tweaking etc. of OGDI. Developers will even be able to leverage sample code for a variety of technologies, including PHP, Python, Flash, JavaScript, Silverlight.

“OGDI-based solutions not only provide easy access to government data, but also demonstrate how cloud computing can significantly reduce the cost, complexity and time to market for solutions that consume the data,” added Daniel Kasun, senior director of the U.S. Public Sector Developer Evangelism Group at Microsoft. “Developers will be able to focus solely on solving the business needs of government agencies, resulting in a breadth of new solutions in a very short amount of time.”