The House of Representatives will hold its next Bulk Data Task Force meeting February 8 from 10:30-12. More information to come.

The Committee on House Administration is working on legislation to reauthorize and reform the Government Publishing Office, holding four hearing on “Transforming the GPO for the 21st Century” over the past year. (1, 2, 3, 4). It would not be surprising if a reform bill were to be introduced soon.

The Congressional Data Coalition has not been part of the review process, although some of our members may have been engaged.

I want to share my personal suggestions for items to be included in reform legislation, although I do not claim to speak for anyone else and I have not read any draft legislation. Continue reading →

On Thursday the House held its third Congressional hackathon–and it was an even bigger success than last time. (See our recap of #1 and #2.) The hackathon cemented the bipartisan nature of using technology to open up Congress (with opening speeches by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer); included the participation of many members of Congress, staff from support offices and agencies, and the general public (including civil society and companies); and featured a dozen demos in addition to break-out sessions.

The following are my notes from the day. Highlights in include the various new tools demonstrated and the work of the modern hearings break-out group.  Continue reading →

On Tuesday, June 27, the House of Representatives will host the 2017 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference.

The all-day conference focuses on making Congress more efficient, transparent, and effective, and brings together people from inside the Legislative branch with member of the public to discuss how technology can help ensure Congress works for everyone.

The conference is held at the Capitol Visitor Center, and is free to attend. You can RSVP here or watch the webcast.

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By: Jonathan Haggerty 

Legislation requiring federal agencies to publish their data online in a searchable, nonproprietary, machine-readable format has been cleared for the Senate following a May 17 markup by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Sponsored by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, S. 760, the Open Public Electronic and Necessary Government Data Act is identical to an earlier Schatz bill that passed the Senate unanimously last year after analysis by the Congressional Budget Office determined it wouldn’t cost taxpayers any money.

What it would do is modernize government agencies and increase their effectiveness, while also allowing taxpayers to see how their money is spent. For these reasons, R Street joined more than 80 organizations—including trade groups, businesses and other civil-society organizations—in urging the Senate committee to pass these badly needed reforms.

The status quo makes it difficult for engaged citizens to view the spending data of the agencies they fund. A taxpayer interested in viewing the companies and organizations that receive federal grants and contract awards would need to have a license for the proprietary Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS). Dun & Bradstreet Inc., the company that owns DUNS, functions as a monopoly with respect to government contractor data.

Continue reading →

By: C. Jarrett Dieterle 

Trying to figure out exactly how much money the federal government spends long has been an exercise in futility for those few brave souls who endeavor to try it. Though the U.S. Treasury has published financial data since the beginning of the republic, the government has an uneven history, to say the least, when it comes to reporting agency expenditures.

Agencies traditionally have employed a hodgepodge of data and spending models that fail to adhere to a common metric. This makes it difficult for lawmakers and policy experts to wrap their arms fully around federal agency spending. Since at least the 1970s, efforts have been afoot to standardize government data, culminating in 2014’s Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, also known as the DATA Act.

The bill’s purpose was to make expenditures both more transparent and more accessible. It requires Treasury to establish common reporting standards across all federal agencies, with the data posted online in a publicly accessible format.

The DATA Act has been in the news again recently because the first agency reporting deadline is May 9, the third anniversary of the law’s passage. Right on cue, the DATA Coalition hosted a panel discussion and “hackathon” last week to let teams of data wonks work with some of the early datasets the agencies have provided.

Keynote speaker Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, emphasized the potential for uniform spending data to shape policy by helping lawmakers better understand the scope and size of government. That, in turn, could allow them to enact more meaningful reforms. As he put it: “If you don’t know where you are, it’s impossible to know where you’re going.”

The coalition also hosted a panel featuring three individuals who have been key to creating the uniform financial data standards the agencies now must use: Chistina Ho, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for accounting policy and financial transparency; Dave Zvenyach, executive director of General Services Administration’s 18F project; and Kristen Honey, senior policy adviser for the Office of Management and Budget’s chief information officer.

The panelists generally were optimistic about the implementation process, though each noted the difficulty involved in pursuing new endeavors within a convoluted bureaucracy like the federal government. Honey was sanguine about the potential for agencies to follow the lead of private industries that use open datasets for productive ends, noting that American taxpayers have “already paid for this data, so they should have access to it.”

She pointed to the example of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ synthetic dataset published last fall that will help them study mental health issues among military veterans. Honey also predicted that state and local governments were likely to follow suit on open data initiatives, which she hoped would help expose and weed out inefficiencies in government spending and operations across all levels of government.

The panelists also cautioned that many agencies likely will encounter difficulties aggregating and successfully publishing their spending data by the May 9 deadline. The concern was that if reports from the Government Accountability Office and agency inspectors general catalog widespread deficiencies around the first reporting deadline, it could lead the public and lawmakers to doubt the DATA Act’s efficacy.

James Madison famously claimed that the power of the purse was “the most complete and effectual weapon” that could be wielded by government. Increasing the standardization and transparency of government spending data will only help strengthen that power.

By Jonathan Haggarty

The Government Publishing Office would be required to make Congressional Research Service reports publicly accessible over the internet, under legislation reintroduced last week by Reps. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., and Mike Quigley, D-Ill.

The CRS, a division of the Library of Congress, is known as Congress’ in-house “think tank.” House offices and committees historically have been free to publish CRS reports on their own websites for constituents to view and some third parties aggregate CRS data on websites like everyCRSreport.com.

But while taxpayers spend more than $100 million annually to fund CRS, timely access to these important documents is usually reserved to Washington insiders. There exists no official, aggregated source for taxpayers to access the CRS’ valuable and informative work.

R Street Vice President for Kevin Kosar, himself a veteran CRS analyst, testified recently before the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, where he presented the panel with a letter signed by 25 former CRS employees with more than 570 combined years of service who all support an open public database of nonconfidential CRS reports.

There is strong precedent for public access to legislative support agency documents. In his subcommittee testimony, Kevin noted the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office and the Law Library of Congress all make their reports public, as do the 85 percent of G-20 countries whose parliaments have subject-matter experts.

Proposals like the Lance-Quigley bill would place publishing responsibilities with another entity, to ameliorate CRS concerns about the service having to publish the reports itself. Briefings and confidential memoranda would not be disclosed and data issued to the public through a searchable, aggregated database would only include nonconfidential information.

As Kevin noted in his testimony, the public deserves to be on equal footing with lobbyists and the Hill.