Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Hearing on Contractor Database Transparency
If you’ve ever tried to research federal contracts you’ll find that the databases used to house those contracts online are not so great. Sen. Claire McCaskill held a hearing yesterday titled, “Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases.” Nancy Scola wrote up the hearing and it isn’t pretty:
All told, there are a million lines of code involved. But there’s really no all told here, because the databases don’t talk to one another. For example, FPDS, the Federal Procurement Data System doesn’t communicate with EPLS, which stands for Excluded Parties List. Which means that theUSASpending.gov website — heralded as the American public’s window into the inner-workings of government, but powered by FPDS — doesn’t even know that contractors contained within it have been banished from government service for defrauding the United States government or otherwise behaving badly. What’s more, on some of these legacy systems, a search for Contractor X, Inc. won’t return results for Contractor X Inc. The shorthand for that particular wrinkle came to be known, during the hearing, as “the comma problem.”
In fact, GAO’s William Woods explained to the senators, the poor state of those databases meant that when his agency was asked by Congress to detail how many contractors were billing the United States government for work in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government watchdog group was forced by technology to admit its ignorance. “We could not answer those questions,” said Woods. How many KBRs are at work in American war zones, being paid with taxpayer dollars? How many Blackwaters? Dunno.
The biggest problem, however, didn’t turn out to be the current state of disrepair, but rather the inability to figure out what to do with the whole disclosure regime. To the surprise of almost everyone in the committee room, the General Services Administration (GSA) has been working to create a more sensible contractor disclosure regime with a more accessible public face. It was difficult for federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to identify who exactly would be overseeing the — yes — contract to revamp the databases. Ultimately that responsibility came down to either the GSA, the Office of Management and Budget or the Office of Federal Procurement.
As Scola writes, “Senator Robert Bennett spoke for many of us today when he sat up on the dais in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and rubbed his temples over, and over, and over, and over again.”
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A Mandated Database: 16 Years Late
Public Citizen reports that a federal database will soon go online that will give car buyers information about individual cars they are considering, such as whether the cars stolen, salvaged or rebuilt. Sounds great, right? The problem is that Congress passed a law requiring the database 16 years ago.Yup. You read me right. This database was mandated 16 years ago.
Three consumer groups, Public Citizen, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS) and Consumer Action, had to go to court to make it happen. In September, they won a federal court decision, with the court requiring the U.S. Department of Justice to set up the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System by tomorrow (Jan. 30th), which will require states, insurance companies and junk yards to report safety and other information about individual automobiles. Some states, notably California and New York, are violating the court order by dragging their feet and not providing any information, but the consumer advocates are pressing the governors in those states to abide by the court ruling.
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Political Web Innovations
The political Web continues to grow as new databases are established every week regularly using new technologies to present important information. I came across three new Web sites, one government and two from nonprofits, today and figured I’d pass them along. The first is the Government Printing Office’s online guide to members of Congress. The GPO’s online guide allows users to search members of Congress by a number of categories, including name, hometown, terms served, and more. The database is fairly rudimentary but it does allow someone to do quick searches for members from a particular state or see how many members have served for 5 terms. This is good step for GPO as it shows that they looking towards using the Web to project information; all they need is to add more search categories and more information for the member profiles. More links to more information makes the data more useful.
Second, we have a great collection and presentation of government RSS feeds from Legistorm. Legistorm’s "The Score" is a one-stop shop for up-to-the-minute government information hosting RSS feeds of the floor of the House, reports from the GAO, CBO, Executive Orders, and Statements of Administration Policy, and headlines from the blog Political Wire. The Score also shows the schedule for the House and Senate floors and the schedule for House and Senate committee hearings. For the lighter side of things they also post top political cartoons of the day. It looks a lot like a preset, government information-only Netvibes page. If you’re watching Congress this is a pretty sweet view.Third, and somewhat of topic, is the new database on carbon emissions Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) from the Center for Global Development. I bring this one up because it is a massive database, containing information on 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide, that is using the Web to provide information to citizens concerned about carbon emissions in useful ways. The site allows for searches in variety of categories. I just typed in my zip code and went to the page for Pepco Holdings, Inc., my power company. The individual page for the power company is a striking way at conveying information, using data charts, Google Maps, and allowing comments (particularly useful for individuals who are directly effected by polluting power plants in their area). While not everyone in America is concerned about finding the latest GAO report they are concerned about the air they breathe and the responsibility of the companies providing energy to their homes. The presentation in the CARMA database goes above and beyond that which I normally see. I would of course love to see this information mashed-up with lobbying records, government contracts and grants, member voting records from these districts, etc…
Conveying information that any American can understand and care about on a gut level, whether it’s carbon emissions or polluted water ways, and matching that to information that makes the powerful accountable for their actions (voting behavior or power of influence through lobbying and campaign contributions) will allow power to decentralize back to citizens and voters. The ProgrammableWeb government page that Ellen just wrote about is a great beginning step to making all government and company information mixable and matchable to suit the needs of each American. As the political Web innovates, politicians will have to become more accountable for their actions.
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FedSpending.org’s Offspring
Earlier this month,
The movement to bring this kind of transparency to the states is being led by a coalition called “Show Me the Spending." Their site provides information on the coalition as well as a very convenient map that allows you to keep track of what is going on in all 50 states.
According to the Show Me the Spending Web site, there are partial databases in seventeen other states and legislation being offered in
