I recently stumbled upon a Federal Drug Administration report issued in response to President Obama's Regulatory Compliance Memo. The May 2011 report chronicles the agency's transparency efforts since 2009 as well as outlines goals for making additional data available.

A look into the FDA's website found mixed results as to the implementation of their stated goals at the time of this writing. The goals were to post the following on their website:

• Information about all the inspections the agency conducts related to market products, rather than the current disclosure of piecemeal information
• A significantly expanded set of enforcement letters
• FDA evaluations of importers
• Information about each case the Department of Justice files on FDA's behalf at the time the case is filed and when the case is resolved.

We were able to find the information specified in the first three goals - import filer evaluation outcomes, enforcement letters, an inspections database, a current list of press releases when DOJ cases are resolved, and a list of cargo thefts. However, we were unable to find any information regarding ongoing criminal investigations or recently filed cases.

The report details all the regulatory compliance data the FDA manages and breaks out which pieces are already publicly available. The list of publicly available data includes import refusal reports, recalls, annual enforcement statistics, and warning letters. The report also describes the agency's transparency efforts to date, which include forming an internal Transparency Task Force, posting a number of datasets on Data.gov, and launching a redesigned webpage and phone app.