The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee favorably reported a number of transparency related bills at a markup earlier today. The bills, including several that Sunlight has strongly supported in the past, were all approved with overwhelming bipartisan support.

In addition to FOIA reform legislation recently introduced by Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the committee moved bills that would bolster the Government Accountability office, improve access to information, and shed light on a unique type of political influence.

We are particularly happy to see that the Federal Advisory Committee Reform Act, which tackles reforms that Sunlight has advocated for, is moving forward. Additionally, Sunlight recently sent a letter in support of the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act, calling it a "measured response to a discrete problem."

We hope that the broad bipartisan support these bills received in committee will translate to swift passage by the full House.

You can follow their progress, along with that of a number of other transparency bills, through Scout, our legislative tracking tool.

Photo Credit: RepublicanConference on Flickr.

The Congressional Transparency Caucus is holding an event this Tuesday, March 12, 2013 to discuss recent progress in FOIA reform and explore what still needs to be done to improve public access to government records. The event will take place in room 2203 of the Rayburn House Office Building and will start at 3 p.m.

The Transparency Caucus will hear from a number of noted FOIA experts:

• Daniel Schuman, Policy Counsel, Sunlight Foundation (moderator)
• Miriam Nisbet, Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration
• Rick Blum, Coordinator, Sunshine in Government Initiative
• Gavin Baker, Open Government Policy Analyst at the Center for Effective Government
• Richard Pollock, Investigative Reporter, Washington Examiner

The Congressional Transparency Caucus is co-chaired by Representative's Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Darrell Issa (R-CA). The Caucus seeks to enact legislation that will bring openness and accessibility to the federal government.

Markup of a bill to make agency reports to Congress transparent did not occur as planned on Thursday after the measure was pulled to allow technical improvements. The Committee on House Administration was set to review the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, which if enacted would require that reports from agencies to Congress be available altogether on a single website, thereby improving transparency and facilitating congressional oversight.

Committee Chairman Dan Lungren explained the delay:

We had originally planned to consider a fifth bill, H.R. 1974. However, some of our colleagues identified some issues with it that they wanted additional time to work out. After consulting with Representative Quigley, the sponsor, they asked that we remove it from today’s schedule and we have done so.

The scheduling of the legislation for markup is a strong indicator of support for the measure by committee Republicans. Committee Democrats released a statement Thursday afternoon:

House Administration Democrats support the bill, but we wanted to make some technical improvements to the bill prior to marking it up. We hope to see continued action on this bill in the coming weeks.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley, enjoys broad bipartisan support and already has been favorably reported out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It also enjoys broad support from the transparency community.

We hope that the measure will be ready for consideration by the full House in the near future. A companion measure is pending before a Senate committee.

This afternoon, the House Rules Committee rejected an amendment to H.R. 5882, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act of 2013, that would have required bulk access to legislative data. The amendment, proposed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, is not included in the final rule. Daniel Schuman examined the amendment yesterday.

As the Rules Committee was meeting, Rep. Issa released a joint statement with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor(R-VA), and Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) supporting bulk data as a "very important step" towards transparency. The Legislative Branch Appropriations bill includes language directing a "task force to expedite the process of making public information available to the public." According to the statement, Boehner, Cantor, Issa, and Crenshaw will "direct the task force to begin its important work immediately," without waiting for the bill to pass.

UPDATE: More to come soon.

Rep. Darrell Issa has offered an amendment that would require bulk access to legislative data as part of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. This is what we and many others have been hoping for. Here's the key language:

As soon as practicable, and no later than 120 days after the enactment of this Act, the Librarian of Congress, in consultation with the Director of the Congressional Research Service, the Public Printer, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the Secretary of the Senate, shall make available to the public through the Internet the bulk legislative summary and status data used by the Librarian to provide the information the Librarian posts on the THOMAS Web site.

Were this language adopted by the House, it would be a tremendous win for transparency. Before it can be considered on the floor, the amendment needs to make it through the Rules Committee, which will be meeting tomorrow at 3pm to consider which of these 14 proposed amendments comply with House rules.

This effort represents another aspect of Chairman Issa's interest in how the public engages with legislative information. That interest came into focus when he launching an innovative bill-commenting tool to solicit public feedback on several high profile bills. He is also the author of the DATA Act, which would give the public the ability to analyze spending information, and co-chairs the Congressional Transparency Caucus with Rep. Mike Quigley.

24 organizations today called upon the House of Representatives to pass the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act. The DATA Act is a landmark transparency bill that would transform how taxpayers, watchdogs, and the government monitor how public money is spent. It would close many of the gaps in the collection of federal spending data and make sure the information is available in a usable, consistent format.

The DATA Act would ensure that every government agency reports its spending information in the same way. It also would establish uniform reporting for recipients of federal funds. This would make it much easier for everyone to monitor where the money is going.

The DATA Act was favorably reported by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform with bipartisan support, and comparison legislation has been introduced by Senator Warner in the Senate. Citizens interested in urging their elected officials to support the DATA Act should go here.

A vote is expected in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

 Orgs in Support of DATA Act

In anticipation of a House vote, today a major transparency bill was posted online for public comment by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (i.e. the DATA Act) is landmark legislation that would transform how taxpayers and watchdogs monitor how public money is spent. The Committee published a draft manager's amendment, which is the text of the bill likely to be considered on the floor.

The DATA Act creates an independent board responsible for publishing and monitoring federal spending, and establishes consistent government-wide financial data reporting standards. As we've noted in our Clearspending reports, the federal government currently does a poor job of tracking and releasing spending data, and the DATA Act would make a major difference.

Ten organizations (including Sunlight) wrote in support of the DATA Act last June, but at the time we had a few concerns. At first glance, they have all been addressed.

We commend Chairman Issa for publishing the draft legislation on the committee's website for public comment. Using its Madison platform, everyone can see each others comments. This is a smart move towards a fascinating model of collaborative legislating.

We will have more to say in the upcoming days regarding the DATA Act. For now, we commend the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for undertaking such a sustained effort to create this landmark transparency legislation and we hope it will be speedily considered by the House of Representatives. Having already garnered bipartisan support, and with companion legislation in the Senate introduced by Senator Warner, we hope it is on its way to becoming law.

Today Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, spoke about his vision for improving open government and federal spending transparency at the O'Reilly Media 2011 Strata Summit. The Chairman focused his remarks on the DATA Act, the bipartisan legislation he introduced that would transform how government tracks federal spending and identifies waste, fraud, and abuse.

He emphasized the importance of making government data available online in real time so that innovative minds can immediately make use the information to build their own businesses. Business, in turn, would help the government identify program mismanagement and data quality problems. The Chairman specifically singled out Vice President Biden as a supporter of efforts to find a common solution to make data available in a systematic way.

In an ensuring Q&A with O'Reily Media's Alex Howard, Chairman Issa explained that the private sector must step up as advocates for greater openness because they will benefit from building and using the tools made possible by greater transparency. He added when government drives down the cost of obtaining information, private individuals will derive value from the analysis of data, not its ownership.

The Chairman also addressed proposed cuts to the Electronic Government Fund, which supports many government transparency programs, saying that he doesn't always agree with funding cuts. He added that he has an assurance from appropriators that they're willing to listen when he makes that case that increased spending on transparency programs in the short term may save more money later. Accurate data will help drive down the inefficiencies of government.

This Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will markup legislation that appropriates funding for the electronic government fund. The e-gov fund supports many of the Obama administration's flagship transparency initiatives, including data.gov, the IT spending dashboard, and USASpending.gov, as well as initiatives like data center consolidation. The House Appropriations Committee voted in June to reduce e-gov funding from $34m to $13-16m and to restructure it by rolling it into a broader "Information and Engagement for Citizens" fund.

The House's initially-proposed draconian cuts to the e-gov fund caused significant controversy, prompting Sunlight's #savethedata campaign, a public letter from major organizations and notable individuals, letters from Senator Tom Carper and former federal CIO Vivek Kundra, and statements from Rep. Darrell Issa,  Rep. Jose Serrano, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

It is unclear at this time whether the Senate will go along with the House's proposed restructuring of the fund as well as the disproportionate reduction in its funding levels. If the cuts go forward, new federal CIO Steven Van Roekel will make to make difficult decisions about which programs to cut or kill. We'll keep you posted.

Tomorrow morning I will be testifying before the full House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the Sunlight Foundation's work to liberate federal spending data and experience in developing databases and tools for tracking spending. The hearing, entitled "Achieving Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending," will be the second opportunity for me to discuss the Sunlight Foundation's Clearspending report where we identified nearly $1.3 trillion in misreported federal spending. The two hour hearing should be live-streamed on the committee website and will start at 9:30 am in Rayburn 2154.

It is an exciting time to continue this important conversation as just today there were two new federal spending developments. The House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced a major piece of transparency legislation that would transform how we track federal spending and identify waste, fraud and abuse. You can read more about the bill from a blog post by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight's policy counsel. The White House also issued an executive order today that will put Vice President Biden in charge of an 11-member oversight board — very similar to the Recovery and Accountability Transparency Board — to address federal agency waste and fraud.

The entirety of my remarks appear below:

6-14-11 - Written Testimony of Ellen Miller before the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform