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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This Week in Transparency – July 24, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:
CQ Weekly’s Maura Reynolds wrote about the Obama administration’s successes and failures in achieving its transparency goals six months into the term. Reynolds quoted Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s director, about how many of their transparency initiatives are still in development and how the kinks are being worked out. “A default position that government data will be accessible to the public in machine-readable format is a huge step forward,” Ellen said. “Is it moving as fast as I’d like? Of course not. But I can be patient while this unfolds.” Ellen also commented on some of the administration’s initiatives, such as “town hall” meetings, that have been tightly controlled. “There is real transparency, and then there is transparency theater,” she said. “I can distinguish between the two.” Reynolds wrote that the more people expect the Internet to deliver the information they want, the more kinds of information they will expect to access that way. “It’s kind of a genie out of the bottle,” Ellen said. “The Internet has raised expectations. I fundamentally believe that the way technology pushes information out to the edges will have a powerful effect on the power structure.” Reynolds reports that open government advocates praise two federal Web sites, USAspending.gov, a site that tracks all federal spending and was set up as a result of a bill co-sponsored by then-Sen. Obama, and Data.gov, the site the new administration designed as a “one-stop shop for number crunchers that consolidates statistics across federal agencies in standard, machine-readable formats.” The article quotes Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, saying the sites could be vehicles for connecting government performance to spending. “From the point of view of the average user, there has been nothing like this before. That is truly a credit to this administration.” Reynolds notes that it was OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org that served as the technical platform for USAspending.gov.
Despite the existence of rules requiring congressional lawmakers to disclose earmarks they request, rules do not exist requiring them to disclose items classified as “program support.” The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig illustrates this problem with a report on how $160 million intended to help Mexico’s police buy U.S.-made first-responder radios was tucked into the voluminous congressional plan for U.S. military spending next year. Leonnig quotes Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, “It kind of makes a mockery of the disclosure requirements we have. They will disclose the little things, the $1 million projects, but when you have the big-ticket items, you don’t have members willing to take responsibility for those.”
Stephanie Condon, writing at CBS News‘ “Political Hotsheet” column, cited a report from Taxpayers for Common Sense that found that lawmakers serving on the the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense included 1,080 earmarks worth $2.7 billion dollars in the fiscal-year 2010 defense appropriations bill they approved last week. The lawmakers specifically requested more than $1.6 billion in earmarks for their campaign contributors, entities who had donated nearly $1 million to the committee members.
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Recovery.gov Description FAIL
As is now showing up all over the social web and news reports, the site Recovery.gov – which was set up to help the public hold government accountable for stimulus spending – lists a stimulus contract awarded to Clougherty Packing LLC for $1.19M for the listed service of “2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED.”
Read as stated, this clearly leads one to believe that the U.S. government spent nearly $1.2M for 2 pounds of ham …sliced.
Now, as has since been clarified via a press release from the U.S Department of Agriculture, “2 POUND” refers to the individual size of each of the 760,000 pounds of ham that were actually purchased – not just one very very expensive ham.
In putting out this press release, the USDA has completely missed the point.
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Watching Government Opacity Melt Away, “Right before our Eyes!”
Vivek Kundra, federal CIO, and Macon Phillips, White House new media director, unveiled Office of Management and Budget’s IT dashboard this morning at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City. And the PDF attendees gave him a well-deserved standing ovation.
The dashboard was built to monitor more than $70 billion in government information technology spending, showing all contracts within every agency, and is one of the features of the redesigned USASpending.gov, re-launched early this morning.
During the presentation, Kundra mentioned that launching a platform that will allow the government to tap into the best thinking and the best ideas. And Phillips added that it’s just the beginning. Kundra also admitted that announcing that the federal data will be available online to the public has spurred government bureaucrats to start cleaning it up, proving the rule that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The initial dashboard is for IT expenditures only. And I’d add, however, that if you want the data on the government investments in General Motors or AIG you’ll need to go to SubsidyScope.com.
In the question session, Andrew Rasiej, PDF co-founder and Sunlight senior technology advisor, asked Kundra if we should redefine “public” as “searchable, accessible and readable online. Kundra replied with an affirmative absolutely “yes.” As Jay Rosen, N.Y.U. journalism prof, tweeted, “What we’ve been watching with CIO Vivek Kundra at #pdf09 is the undoing of the opacity agenda of the Bush years, right before our eyes!”
NextGov.com’s Gautham Nagesh noted today that the site’s new visualization tools are a definite improvement. “It’s now possible with just a few clicks to see how much money an agency has invested in IT projects and what percentage of those projects are behind schedule or over budget,” Nagesh wrote.
We are told that OMB will be holding a press conference this afternoon at 3:30 (Eastern Time) to highlight the redesigned USASpending.gov and the IT dashboard.
Check it out!
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The States Open Up Their Books
Since Congress passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, (also known as the Coburn-Obama bill) which mandated the Office of Management and Budget to create a searchable online database of all government spending (USASpending.gov), Betanews reports that Rhode Island is the latest state to build a similiar Web site. Rhode Islands is actually the 22nd state to have opened its books to the online world.
Betanews says that eight more have legislation pending to do the same. The article states that that Missouri’s Accountability Portal (Go Show-Me State!) is the most comprehensive of all the state online information sites.
This is a great development.
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Accountability for Government Spending
A week ago, I blogged about the launch of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR). The coalition (of which Sunlight is a member) formed to promote accountability for the federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars, for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. CAR’s vision for a national system to collect and disseminate data on government spending is here (pdf).
It’s worth delving into that document. Its bottom line: CAR is calling for online reporting that allows the public to easily search, sort, track and download data on the use of funds from the massive Stimulus Bill.
The document proposes USASpending.gov, the federal Web site that discloses information about nearly all government spending, as the “data house” for the Recovery Act (and other government) spending. But as Greg Elin, Sunlight’s chief evangelist, in a comment to my blog, wrote, that might not be enough: “Spending from the Stimulus package will show up in USASpending.gov, but only at the federal contract level.”
Clearly a system needs to be in place to track the spending and all of its impacts. We should be able to know what’s happening with the money at all levels and all stages. Thus far, Congress has been far too vague about what it expects the online sites to provide. And we want to make sure we end up with a system that provides the most transparency and accountability as possible.
Be sure to check CAR.
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A Transparent and Accountable Recovery
In the wake of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and while Congress debates the massive stimulus bill, the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery was created to promote accountability for both federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars, for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. The best way to assure taxpayers that the funds are being used responsibly is to provide “radical” transparency on stimulus spending and to make the details of the stimulus available in online, in real time.
No great surprise to here that the Coalition (of which Sunlight is a member) is calling on Congress to require online reporting that allows the public to easily search, sort, track and download data on the use of recovery. Each state should be required to report on all funds they receive and all data should be presented in a uniform manner, making sure it is compatible with the USASpending.gov Web site. The Coalition has also state that the newest technology should be applied to both the Recovery.gov Web site and USASpending.gov to make the information more accessible for everyone
Sunlight has joined the over 30 groups as part of the coalition, including the Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, National Institute for Money in State Politics, OMB Watch, OpenTheGovernment.org, Project on Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Commonsense.
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Memo to Congress: Open a Wider Window on Contractors
With the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Housing Administration and the Treasury combining to promise trillions (as much as $7.7 trillion to be precise, but who, other than Bloomberg News, is counting?) with little or no transparency or disclosure for the bulk of the money, it’s easy to lose sight of the relative nickels and dimes doled out in contracts awarded by federal agencies to private firms — all $430 billion of it.
The extent to which contractors interact with government is breathtaking — to give on example, the army field manual setting forth the rules contractors must abide by on the battlefield was written by Military Professional Resources Inc., a government contractor. And abuses in the system have been well-documented: Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham went to jail for steering federal contracts in exchange for bribes; Darleen Druyun, an Air Force procurement officer, earned her prison stripes by swinging a sweetheart tanker deal for Boeing before leaving the Pentagon for a sweetheart job with…Boeing.
Sites like FedSpending.org and the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database bring a little transparency and accountability to the process, but there’s far more information that Congress should require that the federal government provide.
Once upon a time, contractors had to publicly disclose when they went outside the normal procurement process and hired lobbyists to attempt to win contracts. Bringing back those disclosures (which required lobbyists to list those they were meeting with on behalf of clients) and integrating those disclosures with the data available on USASpending.gov (FedSpending’s less robust government cousin) would be one place to start. Clearly identifying which contracts satisfy presidential and congressional earmarks would be useful as well. Linking up contract awards in USASpending with archived solicitation notices in FedBizOpps, the government’s official contracting opportunities database, would also provide the public with a fuller picture of what the government is buying. (In USASpending, a Blackwater State Department contract is described as being for “protective services – Iraq.” Fedbizopps provides somewhat more detail on what a security contract might entail.)
Government can’t do its work without contractors — everything from the security of State Department officials to answering requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act have been outsourced. But government can require more transparency from contractors and the federal agencies they work for — keeping them open keeps the system honest.
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No Time to Read the Bill
Noted curmudgeon David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, yesterday issued a disobliging statement towards the cause of transparency. In heralding his work in crafting a 357-page appropriations super-package in secret Obey launched his defense to Bloomberg, “You’re damn right it has [been done in secret] because if it’s done in the public it would never get done.”
Were the bill done in an open process, colleagues may waste time “pontificating.” Perhaps, they may also consider “reading,” or “understanding,” this $600 billion bill. Lawmakers may even consider “knowing what they’re voting on.” But, of course, who are the elected representatives of government to decide how $600 billion is allocated? They should just follow the dictates of their party leadership on how to vote.
Of course, as the Wisonsinite Obey waved his paw at the notion of openness the Rules Committee met to approve the bill. Not seen by many lawmakers, the bill reported out of the Committee at 7:11 pm last night. And guess what’s on the suspension calendar for voting today? That’s right! Obey’s 357-page, $600 billion appropriations bill.
Ready those stopwatchs and start reading … now. Can you finish this bill before it’s time to vote? Say, 5 o’clock.
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You Can Markup the Bills on the Mortgage Industry Bail Out
Congress is moving rapidly to enact a gigantic taxpayer bailout of the financial sector, with a potential cost of $700 billion or more than $2,000 per American citizen. We believe, as Justice Brandeis said, that “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” and that all legislation ought to be open to public comment and consideration in real-time, not just after the fact.
So, as a public service, Sunlight is posting the proposals that are receiving the most attention by Congress and the Administration – and by you, the people. We invite you to review the bills and share your feedback. Just as you helped us write our model transparency bill you can share your knowledge online and show Congress what you really want to see in this vital legislation.
As we ponder the significance of the Internet this One Web Day, what better way to show how we can use this awesome medium for positive change by ending secret legislation in Washington?
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In Broad Daylight: Lobbyists, Financial Advisers
Two years ago, I was named Time’s person of the year and now I own an insurance company, two mortgage brokers, and I’ll soon own nearly $1 trillion worth of stock. I am so proud of me.
Luckily for me, financial services lobbyists are summoning the economic advisers of both presidential campaigns to help them draft policy positions on how to deal with my newly acquired assets and any future purchases.
It is the “dirty little secret in town,” said one financial-services lobbyist — that after lambasting lobbyists on the stump, the candidates need their counsel on how to respond to a crisis with origins too complicated for most industry outsiders to understand.
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This week, two of the biggest financial groups in Washington, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Mortgage Bankers Association, have drawn in members from across the country to grill economic advisers from both campaigns, develop policy positions and urge prudence as both parties struggle to craft a regulatory stance on the deepening crisis.
Does this mean that Phil Gramm will be sitting across from himself?
The Legal Times blog reports that the Justice Department will release a number of documents and audio recordings related to the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens. One of those audio recordings of Stevens reveals him to be incredibly cheap. “Ted gets hysterical when he has to spend his own money,” says Alaska restaurateur Robert Persons to VECO chief Bill Allen. Stevens won one battle, to obtain Allen’s medical records. Allen is the government’s primary witness and has a history of mental health problems related to a motorcycle accident.
The Ethics Committee is pushing ahead with an inquiry into Rep. Charles Rangel’s financial disclosure snafus. Consensus has yet to take place as Ethics interim Chairman Gene Green and Ranking Member Doc Hastings released dueling letters on the form of the investigative subcommittee.
I think that someone already did this. He’s totally never on TV, so I can’t remember his name.
As I’ve already written about here, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac PACs are now shuttered, ending an era of boundless campaign contributions used to keep lawmakers out of their business. Thanks to those campaign contributions and the subsequent lack of oversight, I now own these two mortgage giants.
Which leads directly to a Quote of the Day, from Eric Brown’s Political Activity Law Blog:
We’ll have “public funding” before we know it, given all of these government bailouts of companies with PACs… AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae…
