Enabling Data Independence for Government Transparency by Ralph Hodgson, CTO, TopQuadrant, Inc. Open Government has become a popular theme, both in the U.S. and other countries.  With “Transparency” gaining momentum, increasing categories and amounts of government data are becoming available on the web.  In the U.S., an impetus for this was Barrack Obama’s memorandum to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. This included the following statement: