Sunlight Foundation

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

…

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…

When Congress passed and the president signed into law the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (two years ago this month) they started a trend that has swept well beyond Washington. According to the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL), state legislatures are starting to emulate the new federal law that requires access through a free and searchable Web site to details on all federal spending.

Since 2007, 11 states (Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington) have established, via legislation or executive order, free and searchable Web sites that give access to state spending. And 24 other states are working on it, with more than half introducing spending transparency bills this year. B2G Exchange blog wrote in May that transparency Web sites were the “hottest new trend” in state government. SunshineReview.org is a good place to monitor progress of government transparency at the state and local level.

Kansas was the first to establish a transparency Web site by passing the Kansas Taxpayer Transparency Act in July 2007, and launching KanView on February 29^th of this year. The site is expected to cost about $40 million but it is estimated that it will generate $1 billion in savings. The champion of the new site, State Rep. Kasha Kelley of Arkansas City, Kan., has since become something of a traveling evangelist for government transparency. National and regional organizations, such as NCSL, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Illinois Policy Institute, have invited Kelley to make presentations at their meetings and conferences. The federal Office of Management and Budget invited her to attend the unveiling of USAspending.gov, the federal transparency site. Because of Kelley’s transparency work, the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform named her a “Friend of the Taxpayer.”

And last month, the Columbus, Ohio, -based Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to small government in the state, launched its Center for Transparent and Accountable Government. The center says it will be collecting and posting online state and local government budgets, employee contracts, public records policies and other information. “Transparency and open government crosses ideologies and is equally supported, and equally opposed, by both major political parties,” said Mike Maurer, the center’s new director, a former statehouse reporter. He also said that Ohioans deserve the same type of transparency from their state and local governments that USAspending.gov provides at the federal level. In conjunction with its launch, the center issued a white paper gauging Ohio’s current level of openness, finding that the state “is behind its peers in government transparency.” They are asking candidates running for state office to take a transparency pledge. And they’ve set up OhioSunshine.org, an open government wiki. “The legitimacy of Ohio government rests on the consent of the governed, but that consent doesn’t mean much when so much of government occurs hidden, or deeply buried,” Hansen said. “Twenty-First Century information technology should be applied to draw back the curtain that stands between government and the people.”

Amen to that.

The explosion of open government activism in the states is a very encouraging legacy of the 2006 transparency act.