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

Sunlight's eagle-eyed developer, Luigi Montanez, took the above screenshot of the official video feed from the House Oversight Committee. It raises the question, who is watching the watchers watching Fresh Prince?

All the more reason to follow Sunlight Live. Tune in this afternoon at 1:30 for our coverage of the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau...or perhaps Maury?

This morning I testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Subcommittee on Technology and Information Policy about the failures of government to make rhetoric meet reality. The Sunlight Foundation has been excited about the new promises of data transparency, but sometimes the results are nowhere near the accuracy and completeness necessary for the data to be useful for the public.

Sunlight's Clearspending analysis found that nearly $1.3 trillion of federal spending as reported on USASpending.gov was inaccurate. While there have been some improvements, little to no progress has been made to address the fundamental flaws in the data quality. Correcting the very complicated system of federal reporting for government spending is an enormous task. It has to be done because without it there is no hope for accountability.

In order to fulfill the promise of the Open Government Directive and move forward to meaningful spending disclosure I offered a number of recommendations to the committee. These include unique identifiers for government contracts and grants, publicly available hierarchical identifiers for recipients to follow interconnected entities and timely bulk access to all data.

A video of the hearing should be available shortly on the committee's website and the entirety of my remarks appear below:

Written Testimony of Ellen Miller before the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform

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: