On June 22, federal spending transparency legislation was unanimously approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Introduced by Rep. Issa on June 13, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (or DATA Act) of 2011 constitutes a major effort to improve government openness and transparency. (Senator Warner introduced companion legislation in the Senate.)

At its heart, the DATA Act does two things. First, it would create an independent board responsible for publishing and monitoring all federal spending, modeled after the Recovery Board. Second, it would create and require government agencies to adhere to consistent government-wide financial data reporting standards.

Like most complex legislation, the devil is in the details, and the DATA Act was substantially improved by an amendment offered by Rep. Issa (in the form of a chairman's mark), and by votes during the committee's business meeting. Our colleagues at the Project on Government Oversight have the details on the amendments adopted at the mark-up. We were particularly pleased to see the inclusion of notice-and-comment rulemaking and a study on how to include tax expenditures as part of the financial reporting.

The Sunlight Foundation, joined by a number of organizations, sent a letter to Rep. Issa prior to the mark-up that expressed "our support for efforts to improve federal financial transparency." The DATA Act represents a significant investment of time and effort, and Rep. Issa and his colleagues deserve praise for taking this issue seriously.

In that letter, we also expressed serious concern about a legislative provision that would cause the reporting regime to sunset after seven years. While many improvements have been made to the bill, this is a serious problem. All the efforts to create federal spending transparency should not evaporate after seven years.

We would also caution that there should be continuity for already required data reporting requirements. For that reason, some of the reporting requirements under FFATA, which created USASpending.gov, should be retained. (Our colleagues at OMB Watch, while taking a dimmer view of the legislation, have forcefully made that point.)

We recommend that another look will be taken at the composition of the new board. We believe that additional members, including perhaps representatives from GAO and the general public, should sit on the Board to ensure that it meets the needs of the public and congressional overseers. We also believe there should be a public advisory committee that can help advise the Board on how it should proceed.

It's worth noting suggestions for additional reporting items identified by Beth Noveck and Jim Hendler. They identify five items, which I've summarized:

1. Corporate persons be required to identify both the beneficial owner and any parent-subsidiary corporate relationships.
2. Entities be mandated to use consistent legal entity identifiers.
3. A process be mandated that would lead toward a single, universal, entity identifier for naming firms with the requirement that additional data fields be open and interoperable.
4. Data be machine-readable, automatically obtainable, and available through federated sites like data.gov.
5. Explicitly grant the power to create pilot projects and iterate.

Many of these ideas have been addressed in one way or another by the legislation. For example, the Board would have the power to require "such additional information reasonably related to the receipt and use of Federal funds," which could encompass identification of beneficial ownership as well as parent-subsidiary relationships. It also has the power to "designate common data elements ... for information required to be reported by recipients or agencies." However, the legislation could be altered to make these points more explicit and concrete.

There is still a long path ahead before the DATA Act could become law. We hope that the concerns that we raised above are addressed so that we can support the legislation without reservation.

A new book from O’Reilly media, entitled Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, discusses the possible ways government can utilize the power of citizen engagement to become more efficient and transparent. The collection of essays features well-known visionaries such as Carl Malamud, Beth Noveck and Tim O’Reilly.

Open Government includes chapters by Sunlight’s Ellen Miller, Bill Allison and Micah Sifry. Their chapters deal with everything from the role of transparency in countering the weight of monied interests to the need for useful and open government data. The forces of co-innovation and transparency must be in government moving forward and this book brings together some illustrative case studies about how to proceed.  Follow this link for a sample of the first eight chapters.

Here’s a nice excerpt from the preface:

What is open government? In the most basic sense, it’s the notion that the people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government. The idea that the public has a right to scrutinize and participate in government dates at least to the Enlightenment, and is enshrined in both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Its principles are recognized in virtually every democratic country on the planet.

But the very meaning of the term continues to evolve. The concept of open government has been influenced—for the better—by the open source software movement, and taken on a greater focus for allowing participation in the procedures of government. Just as open source software allows users to change and contribute to the source code of their software, open government now means government where citizens not only have access to information, documents, and proceedings, but can also become participants in a meaningful way. Open government also means improved communication and operations within the various branches and levels of government. More sharing internally can lead to greater efficiency and accountability.

All of you fortunate enough to be in New York on Monday July 20th, here's an event that's not to be missed. The Markle Foundation is hosting a book presentation by Beth Noveck, Deputy CTO  for open government and leads President Obama's Open Government Initiative. Beth will be speaking about her new book, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful. I think it's a terrific book and have made multiple  copies to Sunlighters and others...That should tell you what I think of Beth and her ideas.

Here are the details: Date:      Monday, July 20, 2009 Time:     12:00 to 2:00 PM - Light Lunch will be Served Location:     The Markle Foundation 10 Rockefeller Plaza, 16th Floor Between 48th & 49th Streets, New York

Schedule: 12:00 PM:     Welcome and introduction by Stefaan Verhulst, chief of research, Markle Foundation 12:05 PM:     Beth's presentation 1:00 PM:     Q&A session, followed by book signing

You can register by following this link. Space is limited, so I'd advise acting promptly on this opportunity.

Personal Democracy Forum kicks off Monday in New York. This will be PDF’s sixth event, with this year's theme being "We.gov,” as in all the ways that we, the people are using technology and new media to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. This is one conference I never miss willingly (I think I've only missed one!) and I'm honestly not that much of a conference-goer. I think of it as my annual "brain food." I can't wait.

A “two-day tech + politics brainfest” is how Tim O’Reilly described PDF last week.  PDF will be tracking the state-of-the-art online politics, exploring government 2.0., looking at the new tools for organizing that are being used, as well as looking at the future of political journalism, blogging and networked media.

I’m excited to see old and new friends, many who are keynote speakers. A radically truncated list includes emerging technology expert (and Sunlight board member) Esther Dyson; senior fellow at Demos and PDF senior editor Allison Fine; now-former Washington Post “White House Watch” blogger Dan Froomkin (Dan posted his last earlier today…A must read!); New York State Senate CIO Andrew Hoppin (I blogged about him earlier today); journalism prof and Buzzmachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis; Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra; Craigslist founder (and Sunlight board member) Craig Newmark; law professor Beth Noveck; “Here Comes Everybody” author Clay Shirky; campaign re-inventor Joe Trippi and “The Cluetrain Manifesto” co-author and blogger David Weinberger. Really there are too many good people coming and speaking to mention

Congratulations, in advance to Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, PDF’s co-founders, and Sunlight’s senior technology advisors. It’s going to be a very exciting couple of days.

Maybe you can join at the last minute.