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

This Thursday will be a important test of the House of Representative's commitment to fund key transparency programs like USASpending.gov, Data.gov, the IT Dashboard. That morning, a very influential subcommittee will debate and vote upon how much money should be made available to the Electronic Government Fund, which pays for these programs and others. In anticipation of the vote, the Sunlight Foundation and many other organizations and notable individuals are releasing a letter today that calls for the restoration of full funding to these transparency programs.

Although the e-gov fund was appropriated $34m in FY 2009 and 2010, it was cut to $8m after months of wrangling over the FY 2011 budget. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has explained that at that funding level, "no project will go unaffected." It will likely mean the end of improvements to websites like USASpending.gov and Data.gov, worsening data quality, the release of fewer datasets, and the end of several programs.

A number of prominent members of Congress, including Reps. Darrell Issa and Jose Serrano and Sens. Joe Lieberman and Tom Carper, have spoken out in favor of the programs made possible by the e-gov fund. This year's dramatically diminished funding level has precipitously weakened these programs; if it continues, they will slip into a coma.

We will keep an eye on the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearing scheduled for this Thursday and let you know what happens. In the meantime, our joint letter is below.

House E-Gov Fund Sign-On letter

During the 2010 midterm election David and Charles Koch, owners of the massive energy conglomerate Koch Industries, became the face of secret donors to a new set of political groups spawned by the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. Koch Industries is also a longtime government contractor receiving $85 million in contracts over the past eleven years. These two facts may not seem to overlap, but if President Obama signs a draft executive order leaked this week Koch Industries and a large number of the nation’s companies would face the prospect of having to disclose their now-secret contributions to political efforts when they seek new federal contracts.

The centerpiece of the draft order, which requires disclosure of a variety of contributions that are already disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, is its requirement that any organization bidding on a federal contract disclose contributions made by the organization, its subsidiaries, and its directors to any third party group intending on using that money for independent expenditures or electioneering communications.

The order specifically targets a disclosure loophole created by the Citizens United ruling. The ruling opened the door for a whole host of organizations, including 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations, to run electoral advertisements without disclosing their donors to the public. The most notable of these groups is Crossroads GPS, a conservative nonprofit that spent more than $15 million on advertisements opposing Democratic candidates for office in the 2010 midterm election.

Under the order donations to Crossroads GPS and other groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Prosperity would have to be disclosed by companies seeking federal contracts.

The order is an attempt by the White House to do what Congress could not do when it failed to pass a legislative response to Citizens United, known as the DISCLOSE Act, at the end of last year.

By applying to all organizations submitting a bid for contract the order would cover a huge swath of the country's companies. JPMorgan Chase, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, and the aforementioned Koch Industries all hold government contracts. Thirty-three of the forty-one companies listed in the top 100 campaign contributors over the past two decades are recipients of federal contracts. According to USASpending.gov, there are 129,083 recipients of federal contracts, although many of these may be duplicates.

Even News Corporation, the owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, is a government contractor. The executive order would require both the company and its owner Rupert Murdoch to disclose contributions to political groups. Last year News Corporation contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which already discloses its donors, and, according to a New York Times investigation, another $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which does not disclose its donors.

That Times investigation uncovered a number of contributors to the Chamber’s political efforts, most of whom also hold government contracts and would face new disclosure rules under the potential executive order. In addition to News Corporation, Dow Chemical, Aegon, Chevron Texaco, Prudential Financial, and Alpha Technologies all contributed to the Chamber of Commerce in recent years while holding government contracts.

While the order would certainly not apply retroactively these companies would have to disclose their political giving for the two previous years if they sought a new contract from the government.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., criticized the draft Executive Order for stifling speech and failing to cover unions that support the President and his party, “This order is a purely political act offered under the benign label of disclosure. The order would not impose the same requirements on the labor unions or other organizations who support the President.” While many unions receive federal grants there are few receiving federal contracts.

One notable exception is the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, the AFL-CIO, which received small contracts from the Department of Labor as recently as last year. USASpending.gov lists two purchase orders from 2010 for contracts with the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute. The contracts were with the Department of Labor and Department of Transportation. The draft order does not distinguish between types of contracts, thus any future contract with the AFL-CIO would trigger the same disclosure requirements applied to corporations with contracts.

Some companies already voluntarily disclose contributions to political groups on their corporate websites, although most of the time the information is dated, poorly defined, or not explained.

General Dynamics lists contributions to political nonprofits, but does not provide names. Instead, the defense contractor lists $125,000 in contributions to three 501(c)(4) nonprofits.

The top recipient of contract dollars from the federal government, Lockheed Martin, lists contributions it made to trade associations in 2010 including a $50,000 contribution to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lockheed states, “We believe that the non-deductible portion of our dues is for trade association lobbying.”

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Corporation detail their contributions to candidates and 527s, but do not explain a policy for contributions to other politically active organizations. Meanwhile, Pfizer releases an annual report on its political action committee contributions, which does not list contributions to nonprofits or trade associations.

In the last few weeks there’s been a whirlwind of news and speculation about what will happen to the federal government’s online transparency efforts. From the first rumble of budget trouble to a frantic search for information on when the sites would go dark, and an extended legislative give-and-take over funding levels, the storm has cleared enough to know what’s left standing.

Although the future of online transparency is uncertain, what we can know for sure is that our collective efforts averted a disaster. A few programs will survive, with the immediate fate of online transparency in the hands of federal CIO Vivek Kundra and a few key legislators.

Congress and the President collectively cut the Electronic Government Fund from $34m in FY2010 to $8m in FY2011. For much of this past year, the e-gov fund kept the lights on with the fumes from last year’s funding combined with a little under $2m from this year’s funding and some fancy financial footwork. Don’t be misled by these (relatively) small numbers: all agencies dramatically reduced their expenditures and held off on new projects while Congress worked out a budget, so the amount already spent represents starvation levels. The famine may continue. Even though Congress is supposed to pass a new budget for 2012 by October 1, which would make new monies available, it’s highly doubtful that this will take place on time. The $6m-or-so may have to last a long time.

There is a glimmer of hope, however. Because of our collective effort to #savethedata -- with nearly 10,000 signatures to our letter to Congress -- instead of these transparency programs going dark (except a very basic version of USASpending.gov) as would have happened at the originally-proposed $2m level, more programs will survive. In addition, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Issa has made a personal pledge to use his reprogramming authority (i.e., the ability to shift funds around) to try and keep many sites alive; congressional leaders such as Sen. Lieberman and Rep. Serrano also have stressed the importance of these programs.

Even so, Vivek Kundra, the federal CIO and e-gov administrator, will now have to make some very difficult decisions about which programs to kill or curtail. Two programs, USASpending.gov and Performance.gov, were created by federal law and will likely have some kind of funding priority.

It’s going to be very hard to squeeze $34m work of programs into less than $8m worth of funding of which 1/4 is already spent. From what I’ve heard, keeping many of these programs supported at basic levels (including maintenance) would cost around $15-20m.

In order to keep these programs going, there are 3 strategies that may be employed. First, Mr. Kundra and OMB will “pass the hat,” which means that they will ask other agencies to help support some of these programs. Given the funding cuts that most agencies have sustained, this will be a difficult ask. Second, other agencies may be asked to take charge of (and funding responsibility for) programs close to their missions. Third, money will be shifted around in an attempt to keep priority programs alive until (hopefully) more money can be found in next year's budget. In light of the visions recently offered by both President Obama and House Republicans, we must ensure that transparency is more than a bipartisan talking point.

If we continue to keep up the pressure, and if transparency leaders continue to emerge from both sides of the aisle, we have a fighting chance to truly open up the government to the American people. The last few weeks show that success is possible.

For more information on the programs at stake, here’s the six major areas covered by the e-gov fund and the amount of money intended to support a year of operations for each category. Please note that this is a partial program list, and the numbers may be a bit off, but it's drawn from the best information available to me.

1. Improving Innovation, Efficiency and Effectiveness, and Federal IT ($10m)

• Cloud Computing -- supports government efforts to move to the cloud by addressing security, standards, and other issues
• Apps.gov (part of cloud computing) -- helps the government use cloud computing and social media by negotiating gov’t friendly contracts and creating an agency-facing storefront
• FedRamp (part of cloud computing) -- a unified government-wide risk management program that supports agency security services while reducing security burdens upon each individual agency
• Data center consolidation
• Mobile apps -- see http://apps.usa.gov/
• Data.gov innovations platform

• Apps.gov/now -- builds free agency-friendly engagement tools such as blogs, wikis, etc.
• Citizen Services Delivery Dashboard (not yet public) -- will track agency performance against customer service standards
• Challenge.gov -- puts all innovation prizes and challenges in one place

• USASpending.gov -- publishes federal spending on contracts and grants
• Sub-award recipient reporting (part of USASpending.gov) -- shows the sub-recipients for contracts and grants
• IT Dashboard -- reports on $80b in federal government IT funding and tracks performance
• Performance.gov (not yet public) -- tracks how agencies are performing against key metrics

• Fedspace.gov -- a secure Intranet and collaboration workspace for federal employees across agencies

• Data.gov -- helps the public access to high-value, machine readable databases

• 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT -- http://1.usa.gov/ezeKT8
• PaymentAccuracy.gov -- tracks the accuracy of payments made by the U.S. government & identifies high-error programs

In December Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa sent letters to 142 organizations soliciting suggestions for regulations that were cumbersome and threatened jobs and company bottom lines. Those organizations included some of the biggest lobbying forces in Washington and, also, some of the bigger contributors to both Republicans and Democrats.

The 142 organizations combined to contribute $11.8 million to Republican candidates and $9.6 million to Democratic candidates through their respective political action committees in 2010. The biggest contributors to Republican candidates were the National Association of Home Builders with $1.285 million and the Associated Builder and Contractors Association with $1.174 million. Top contributors to Democrats included the Credit Union National Association withe $1.241 million and the American Hospital Association with $1.152 million.

Forty-two of the 142 organizations spent over $1 million lobbying in Washington in 2010. These included major lobbying forces like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($100.21 million), General Electric ($39.29 million), Generic Pharmaceutical Association ($18.581 million), American Hospital Association ($17.62 million), Edison Electric Institute ($13.08 million), ExxonMobil ($12.4 million), Business Roundtable ($8.794 million), and National Association of Manufacturers ($8.62 million).

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked all organizations that have received letters from Issa to disclose their responses to the Oversight Committee chairman. So far, fifty-six organizations have disclosed their responses to Issa's solicitation.

The Chamber of Commerce, the nation's biggest lobbying spender, also spent approximately $32 million on political advertising during the 2010 midterm election. The Chamber spent over $30 million on ads opposing Democrats and supporting Republicans and $1.8 million on supporting Democrats.

Forty-nine of the 142 organizations reported no PAC contributions and no lobbying expenses in 2010.

Below is a Socrata chart including all PAC contributions and lobbying numbers for the 142 organizations solicited for information from Chairman Issa. Data comes from both the Senate web site and the Center for Responsive Politics:

Politico has an excellent round-up of the many Silicon Valley executives who orbit around the White House giving advice on a range of policy issues. One thing that the article could use is some context as it relates to the campaign contributions that went from these tech companies to the President's campaign in 2008. One way to insert that context is to run the article through the Sunlight Foundation tool Poligraft.

Poligraft checks the names in the articles to databases of campaign finance and lobbying and prints the context along the side of the article. For this Politico piece, the article needed one simple addition for Poligraft to work properly: the name Barack Obama. With this small edit the article, for which you can see the Poligrafted version here, pops with influence information.

Now you can see that the all of the companies named in the article contributed to the President's 2008 campaign. You can also see that they all contribute to President Obama's chief gadfly, Rep. Darrell Issa.

Check it out.