What better celebration of Ada Lovelace Day – celebrating the achievements of women in technology – could we have than to honor the women who are key to the government transparency movement to which technology is so key?  These women are using technology to pry open the doors of government, and are creating a new style of transparency powered by the Internet. By either making more political and spending data available online, facilitating others to do the same, addressing questions that arise in the age of technology or by creating new tools and context to help all of us connect the dots and understand what the data has to tell us, these women are empowering all of us to hold our government accountable in ways we never could before. As I look around to my colleagues, I see a remarkable number of us – too many to really mention in one column. So here are a few: Ryan Alexander became President of Taxpayers for Common Sense in November 2006, after more than seven years of serving on the board. Taxpayers, under her leadership, has become the go-to organization if you want to find out anything about earmarks. She’s had a long history working on behalf of the public interest: in the past 20 years she has worked as a non-profit advocate, litigator, manager, funder and consultant on issues from media policy, election reform, public health policy, transparency, privacy, women’s economic security and citizen participation. You can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ryanalxndr.

Danielle Brian’s been battling government secrecy for two decades as the Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) — a group that investigates, exposes, and remedies corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more effective, accountable, open and ethical federal government. POGO’s investigations have led to major reforms and cuts in wasteful spending in such areas as government secrecy, nuclear security, drug industry influence on health policy, and defense contractor waste and fraud. When she started there – there was no such thing as a fax or even a feeder in the copy machine, let alone the Internet. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/daniellebrian.

Leslie Harris is the President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, where she is responsible for the overall vision and direction of the organization and serves as its chief strategist and spokesperson. Under her leadership, CDT has grown significantly, opened a West Coast office and launched an influential Health Privacy Project. Leslie is widely known for her work on policy issues related to civil liberties, new technologies and the Internet including free expression, government and consumer privacy, cyber security and global Internet freedom. She frequently testifies before Congress and federal agencies, is a regular contributor to several online publications and blogs, including the Huffington Post, and in 2009 was named one of Washington's Tech Titans by Washingtonian magazine.  You can follow her on twitter at http://twittter.com/Leslie_Harris

Sheila Krumholz has been the Executive Director of the Center of Responsive Politics since 2007. She has been at the Center since 1989 (with a few years off) working her way up through the research ranks, overseeing the internal data compilation and analyses found on CRP’s site, OpenSecrets.org, as well as customized research for CRP’s clients. Under her leadership, CRP has increased its reputation as a reliable source for accurate, nonpartisan research and the premier resource on political finance, lobbying, revolving door and other influence data at the federal level. Sheila also a heads an organization where three of their four senior staff members – including the directors of IT and research – are women, representing a combined 40 years of work at the Center. You can follow her on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/skrmhlz.

Jen Palkha spent 15 years in technology media before deciding to focus on transparency at the municipal level with the founding of her new organization – Code for America – that works with city governments to identify web apps that drive transparency, efficiency and participation, and that are reusable by other cities. Code for America recruits teams of fellows from the web industry to build these apps through a structured program of public service. Jennifer is currently working with the 11 cities who applied for their first development cycle to decide which three to five projects will be built starting in January 2011. You can follow her on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pahlkadot.

Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and Hill staffer, started Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington in 2003. CREW has used litigation as a tactic to force our government to be more transparent. Melanie and CREW were instrumental in revealing that millions of emails disappeared from Bush White House servers. It is also thanks to CREW’s lawsuits against both the Bush and Obama administrations that the Obama White House now makes White House visitor records available online. You can follow CREW's work on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/CREWCREW

And my colleagues would berate me for not including my own story. I am co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. I am the founder of two other prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money and politics – the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign – and an expert on transparency and the influence of money in politics. You can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ellnmllr

It’s been an enormous pleasure to work with  Ryan, Danielle, Sheila, Leslie, Jen and Melanie for many years.  We all say “thank you, Ada” for paving the way.

This morning a number of organizations -- POGO, OMB Watch, CREW, National Security Archive, the Center for Democracy and Technology  and the Open The Government coalition-- and Sunlight sent a letter to Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO, about improvements needed to the release of High Value Datasets on Data.gov. Here are the core recommendations included. Please tell us what you think in the comments below.

As advocates for government openness, we support the Administration’s efforts to provide the public with access to information through Data.gov. We are eager to work with you to ensure the success of Data.gov and, in that spirit, write to raise our concerns with the datasets submitted by agencies to fulfill their requirement under the Open Government Directive to post three high value datasets by January 22, and to offer constructive suggestions for improving their usefulness.

As an overall recommendation, we urge you to add public representatives to the Open Government Initiative interagency working committee and ask the committee to address the problems and recommendations identified below.

Release Format and Usability by the Public

We understand one of the primary purposes of Data.gov is to enable the technology community and transparency advocates to most effectively use the data to make a direct impact on the daily lives of the American people. The format of the data plays a key role in its usability; many within the community of advocates who re-use and repackage government data would prefer data in CSV format, rather than the XML format in which many of the posted databases are provided. Accordingly, we recommend that you strike an appropriate balance between formats (such as XML) that serve the coding community and web-based presentations by agencies that can be used and understood by the general public.

In addition, some of the currently posted files are quite large, ranging upward to several hundred megabytes. Their large size undermines their usefulness for most people or organizations. The large number of currently posted datasets also makes it difficult to find a particular database of interest. We therefore recommend that if a Data.gov dataset is available from an agency through a web-based interface, Data.gov link to that interface on the dataset's Data.gov landing page. For a consumer looking for information on a car seat, for example, it would be far easier to search the Department of Transportation's online database rather than scrolling through screen after screen of raw data in XML format. Additionally, as agencies continue to post datasets to Data.gov, efforts should be made to identify those of greatest public interest that lack such interfaces and develop web interfaces that allow the data to be explored online.

Further, while we agree there is value in aggregating government data in a single site, it is questionable how much the collocation of the currently posted information on Data.gov actually benefits the public. The site is not searchable by topic and does not provide any way to bring together data from different sources on similar topics.

As an enhancement to the organization of the site, we recommend that you use tagging or metadata to enable the public to bring together information on a topic. The thesaurus that USA.gov uses provides a useful example of the needed vocabulary.

Value of Data

The release of the datasets also has prompted discussions about the value and the quality of the released data, and the additional value provided by access to existing data in a new format. We believe repackaging old information is of marginal value, yet that is what many agencies have done with their recent postings on Data.gov. According to the Sunlight Foundation, of 58 datasets posted by major agencies, only 16 were previously unavailable in some format online. This leaves the impression that agencies posted easily available data, the proverbial low-hanging fruit, rather than seriously considering which of their datasets truly are of high value. While these initial postings can be considered a test run, more attention needs to be directed toward ensuring the overall quality and usefulness of the data.

In addition, sustained attention should be paid to the possibility of making some of the datasets available as feeds that are constantly up to date, rather than as static datasets that are pulled down and then reposted on an occasional basis. We recommend that agencies be required to explain why the data is high value by having them designate which of the “high value criteria” the data meets: information that can be used to increase agency accountability and responsiveness; improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations; further the core mission of the agency; create economic opportunity; or respond to need and demand as identified through public consultation. Similarly, we recommend requiring agencies to indicate whether a high value dataset was previously unavailable, available only with a FOIA request, available only for purchase, or available, but in a less user-friendly format. Going forward, this will make it much easier to track how agencies are complying with the other requirements of the Open Government Directive. While we appreciate the value of data that furthers the mission of an agency, we believe it is equally important to make available to the public data that holds an agency accountable for its policy and spending decisions. We hope to see more datasets of this type available in the near future.

Quality

As is to be expected in efforts of this type, there were a number of glitches--datasets that could not be downloaded or, once downloaded, could not be opened (the Central Contractor Registration FOIA extract from the General Services Administration seems to have caused several users problems). Additionally, some datasets were incomplete (the Hazard Grant Mitigation Program data released by FEMA is missing 23 years of data between 1966 and 1989). Even more troubling, some did not have header rows, and for those that did, their Data.gov pages did not always link to code sheets explaining what those header rows meant. Without this information, the data cannot be used.

We therefore urge the implementation of a responsive feedback mechanism that allows the public to alert an agency that a specific dataset is not working, lacks information, or is missing explanatory material and provides a response to the concerns within a specified time. One way to address this may be to include an agency contact with the ability to resolve any database problems or provide information about the database. The interagency working group could sample the quality of these agency-specific dialogues to ensure that they are having an impact and to develop recommendations on best practices to improve the responsiveness. Additionally, we strongly recommend that all datasets on Data.gov be directly associated with their code sheets.

Finally, we are concerned with the current lack of public notice when data is removed from the site. We respectfully urge you to note all raw tools and data that are removed from Data.gov, and to provide an explanation for their removal.

Many of the concerns outlined above apply across all or many of the agencies’ datasets. Accordingly, we think that standards for handling these types of problems can easily be addressed through the interagency working group and then disseminated amongst the agencies.

Rep. Alan Grayson is taking advantage of a legislative misfire by overzealous lawmakers. And he's asking anyone out there to help him.

Last week, the House approved a motion to recommit to a student loan bill that banned funding to the community organization ACORN after employees of the group were videotaped offering advice to two people posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to file fraudulent tax forms. Unfortunately for those seeking to target ACORN, there is no way to single out one organization from receiving federal funds. Therefore the bill drafters banned any organization under investigation for or having been found guilty of committing contracting fraud from receiving federal funds. (The bill also bans federal funds for any organization that violates federal or state election, campaign finance or lobbying disclosure laws.) While this may have seemed like a smart idea, it winds up applying to a large number of defense contractors and others.

If this bill were actually to take effect, the United States of America would probably have a serious aging problem with our Air Force planes fleet. According to the Project on Government Oversight's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, Lockheed Martin has eleven fraud instances and Northrup Grumman has nine. Northrup Grumman has settled one False Claims Act for more money, $325 million, than ACORN has received since 1994, $54 million.

Rep. Grayson has posted a request to help him identify contractor fraud to be placed in the legislative history of the bill when courts review the legislation, which, if this language remains intact, they will. Grayson posted a Google Spreadsheet for anyone to add instances of contractor fraud to. All you need is a reputable source.

Of course, the aforementioned Federal Contract Misconduct Database is a great place to start.

Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) released Revolving Door, the results of their six-month investigation into the activities of 24 members of President Bush's cabinet. The 108-page report, as their release says, demonstrates that the "revolving door" remains open. Many of the former cabinet officers now work for corporations that they had regulated. And in other cases, these individuals helped the companies receive large government grants and contracts.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, calls out these former "public servants" for using their government positions as springboards to new lucrative corporate jobs, making a mint on the backs of American taxpayers in the process. "It may be legal, but it is certainly not honorable," she adds.

The Center for Responsive Politics has a useful Revolving Door database that tracks anyone whose résumé includes positions of influence in both the private and public sectors. The Project On Government Oversight has also done a number of good investigations exposing the revolving door between official Washington and corporate America.

Here's some potentially encouraging news. On Wednesday, Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General of TARP, disclosed that recently-approved agreements with the automakers and Citibank contain requirements for better disclosure. In a letter he sent Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman of Senate Finance Committee, Barofsky reported that the agreements give his office access to Citigroup's records and requires that the company report how they are using the bailout funds.

As our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense wrote, we all hope he gets the remaining 280 banks who also get bailout funds to start disclosing how they are spending the money.

Michael Smallberg at Project on Government Oversight adds that the new agreements also put limits on executive compensation. He calls on Congress to pass a bill that would beef up Barofsky's oversight ability by giving his office more tools.

Lots of crossed fingers here.

Scott Amey at the Project for Government Oversight's POGO blog writes about being positively surprised by one thing he found at USAspending.gov, the government site modeled after OMB Watch's FedSpending.org. 2007 data has been replaced by updated FY 2008 and 2009 totals. (This is shocking on two fronts. The government is usually years behind in reporting contract spending dollars.)

But Scott's more shocked to find that the government spent over $510 billion on goods and services in FY 2008. "And if history repeats, this total will increase by an additional $10-$20 billion as agencies report additional information," he writes. That amount would rank as the 25^th largest GDP in the world, he figures.

In the shadow of the huge multi-trillion dollar financial bailout, all these huge numbers are mind numbing. Federal contract spending is out of control, and deserving of much more oversight and transparency, don't you think?

In the winter of 2007, in between the two sessions of the 110^th Congress, Sen. Trent Lott, an institution in Congress since the 1980s, suddenly announced his impending retirement from the Senate. Lott had an illustrious career as a legislator rising all the way to the top of the Senate, serving as Senate Majority Leader from 1996 to 2001, until a misfired compliment led his party to toss him as leader. Lott’s luck continued to run a shore as Hurricane Katrina demolished his gulf coast home leaving the senator to wage a battle with insurers claiming that there was no evidence that his home was destroyed by a hurricane because there was no home left. These reasons may have been enough to drive Sen. Lott to retire from the Senate when he did, but it was actually the implementation of a simple ethics requirement that pushed him to give up the trappings of the Senate and embrace the cash cow that is K Street.

In October 2007, Congress approved new ethics and lobbying reforms, including an extension of the “cooling off” period for Senators. The “cooling off” period refers to the period of time that some government employees are restricted from lobbying the government after they leave office. The new rules mandated a two-year “cooling off” period – extended from one-year – starting at the beginning of the next session in 2008. Trent Lott avoided this new rule by retiring on December 18, 2007.

“Cooling off” periods, or revolving door reforms, do not solely apply to Congress. The executive branch faces similar problems of conflicts of interest arising from appointees leaving to pursue private sector gigs and private sector employees entering government service. This problem has become increasingly acute over the past decade and that’s why the Project on Government Oversight includes revolving door reform as a key plank in their Presidential transition recommendations:

POGO Recommends: The President should issue an Executive Order that executive branch employees, including political appointees, must consider their position a matter of public trust and service, not a stepping stone for personal gain. Once they leave government service, there should be a three year prohibition against public employees and officials working for or representing industries or other private interests that they regulated, contracted with, or otherwise oversaw. Similarly, the President should exercise great caution in appointing individuals with ties to the industry they will oversee. The Office of Government Ethics and agency ethics offices should be given administrative enforcement power over violations of ethics, as well as the necessary resources to execute this new mandate.

These recommendations break down as follows:

1) Extend “cooling off” period from one- to three-years. 2) “[E]xercise great caution in appointing individuals with ties to the industry they will oversee.” 3) Give enforcement power to the Office of Government Ethics.

All of these are welcome recommendations as they will help stop conflict of interest abuses that have become all too common in government. The new restrictions proposed by POGO go a long way to making those employed by government focused more on their current service than the future payout in the private sector.

Of course, there are ways that the lobbying industry and the private sector have of circumventing these rules. By acting as an advisor, a former employee can help clients in their lobbying campaign without making actual contacts with government officials that constitute lobbying. These kinds of loopholes are likely impossible to close.

The brightest side to POGO’s recommendations is that they are incredibly likely to happen, as they have been embraced by President-Elect Barack Obama.

In the case of extending the “cooling off” period and exercising “great caution in appointing individuals with ties to the industry they will oversee,” President-Elect Obama’s plans, as told on Change.gov, are:

Close the Revolving Door on Former and Future Employers: No political appointees in the Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.

On giving the Office of Government Ethics more enforcement ability:

Enforce Executive Branch Ethics: The Obama-Biden administration will give the Office of Governmental Ethics strong enforcement authority with the ability to make binding regulations, and it will work with inspectors general in all the federal agencies to enforce ethics rules, minimize waste and ensure federal officials are not using their offices for personal gain. The OGE will also be the clearinghouse of all public records relevant to ethics in the Executive Branch and place this information on its website. Finally, the OGE will promulgate rules and procedures to record all oral and in-person "lobbying contacts" between registered lobbyists and political appointees and make those records available to the public in a searchable computerized database.

The key now, for POGO and others supporting their recommendations, will be to make sure that promises like these are enforced.

Lots of folks are starting to think about the transition to a new Administration.  We know of at least 2 dozen such efforts thus far.  And so we'll blog about them as they start to get released. 

POGO, the Project on Government Oversight, just released a list of recommendations of major reforms they believe the new presidential administration should adopt to make the federal government more effective, accountable, open, and honest. And we sure like their list! POGO sent their list to both the McCain and Obama transition teams.

As Mandy Smithberger writes at the POGO blog, they are advising the transition teams to making agency missions more modern and relevant, keeping government's role federalized, protecting whistleblowers, stopping the revolving door between government and private industry, strengthen the Freedom of Information Act and other transparency reforms, and other reforms to provide better government oversight.

Our friends at POGO say their recommendations, if implemented, will make the federal government work more efficiently, as well as shrink the cost of government. As the report states, "the initial costs of these reforms will be more than offset by the longterm savings for the taxpayer."

Yesterday President Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 which includes a provision to establish a government-wide database with information on the integrity and performance of federal contractors and grantees. But get this! The government's version will not be made available to the public. This is an outrage.

So thank heavens for POGO, The Project on Government Oversight, which has just released an updated and expanded version of their Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which includes information on the misconduct history of the top 100 federal contractors.  POGO will continue to maintain their database as a free public resource with updated information on the misconduct of the top federal contractors. Here's a link to a helpful fact sheet regarding myths about the federal database.

POGO has made several format changes and added new search and sort functions that will make the database easier to use. They built the FCMD as a way to help separate responsible contractors from shady and corrupt ones. Here's a link to POGO's press release announcing the updated database.

POGO's site goes back to 1995, and currently lists over 750 instances of contractor misconduct, such as fraud and violations of environmental, securities, and labor laws. Topping the list is Lockheed Martin, with 47 instances of misconduct.

And here's the ultimate irony.  The Fed's database will be modeled after POGO's FCMD.