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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Senator McCaskill Announces Hearing on Contracting Database, Calls for Public’s Questions
Senator McCaskill just announced something doubly relevant to these groups. (posted to both Open House and Sunlight Labs lists)
First, she’s the Chair of the Contracting Subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Gov’t Affairs Committee, and they’ve just annoucned a hearing on a new unified database structure for government spending. The below press release has more detail, but the short story is that the way this database is created will have enormous impact on how spending accountability functions online.
Second, she is asking the Open Government community for questions she should be asking. Here’s where they’re asking for questions:
http://su.pr/4cbYQT
http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#4cbYQT/mccaskill.senate.gov/issues/soco/suggestions.cfm/
http://mccaskill.senate.gov/issues/soco/suggestions.cfm/That means there are at least two reasons to participate. One: online spending transparency needs to be built well. Two: other committee chairs should engage in similar behavior. This community can significantly affect both the database and the participatory processes, by participating. (Continue reading…)
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GSA Intergovernmental Solutions Newsletter, Spring 2009
The GSA just published the Spring 2009 edition of their Intergovernmental Solutions Newsletter, featuring a diverse offering of transparency related essays from within and outside government. My essay, “Transparency in Government Begins Outside” starts on page 29.
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White House: Where is the CTO?
On his second day in office, President Barack Obama issued a sweeping memorandum on transparency in government, setting out an ambitious to-do list for the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This person was to be responsible initially — along with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services Administration — to come up with a concrete list of recommendations to implement the principles set out in the memorandum, namely, that government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative, and to do it within 120 days.
We’re now at day 21 and counting , and the Obama Administration has yet to appoint that CTO — a position he promised to create during his campaign.
So I’m worried: the clock is ticking to prepare that critically important memo. And besides the ticking clock there have been several examples of the White House falling down on its promises to be transparent, particularly complying with its promise to post all legislation online for 5 days before consideration. (The history of posting bills online to allow for public comment has been either non-existent or spotty to date.) Getting that CTO “online” seems more and more important every day. To walk the walk, Obama needs the CTO.
So what’s going on? Inquiring minds want to know.
