Important government transparency programs would receive a small boost if the President's proposed budget for FY 2013 were enacted. The Electronic Government Fund, which supports Data.gov, the IT Spending Dashboard, and USASpending.gov, among other programs, would increase by $4.2 million in FY 2013, from $12.4 million in FY 2013 2012 to $16.665 million in FY 2013. This is still far less than the $34 million appropriated in FY 2009 and FY 2010, but would make an appreciable difference in supporting or expanding transparency initiatives.

The last few years have been turbulent for this important source of transparency funds, with appropriators essentially zeroing out the fund, then placing its programs on life support, and then finally restoring a small but significant funding level.

Of course, the President's budget proposals have been disregarded in the past, especially with respect to this fund, so we'll have to keep a close eye on appropriators. Hopefully last year's deal will avoid the kind of crisis that necessitated the #savethedata campaign.

The Congressional Justification, a document that explains how the funds will be used that is submitted by GSA to Congress (but apparently is not on the White House website) is available below.

GSA Justification for the Electronic Government Fund for FY 2013

Major open government initiatives, namely Data.gov, Performance.gov, and USAspending.gov, are likely to remain top priorities for the E-Government fund, according to David McClure, as quoted in Federal Computer Week.

“These types of programs, I think, have permanence,” said David McClure, associate administrator at the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies.

The E-Gov Fund supports such projects, which "could potentially lead to benefits including cost savings and efficiency, customer service transparency, and governmentwide collaboration and information sharing," according to a recent Government Accountability report [PDF]. Daniel discussed the report recommendations last week.

The fund has faced serious budget cuts from both the House and the Senate. The House initially proposed cutting the fund from the $34 million allocated in FY2010 to $2 million in FY2011, prompting activism efforts including Sunlight's Save the Data campaign. Congressional gridlock kept the fund operating at FY2010 levels. The House then voted in June to reduce the fund to $13 million for FY2012 and restructure it into a broader "Information and Engagement for Citizens" fund. A few weeks ago the Senate voted to decrease the fund by an additional $11 million below House levels.

While it is unclear at what level funding will ultimately be set, it is evident that it is likely to be much less than it was before. Open government initiatives will be facing tough competition for funding, as former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra outlined in a letter to Sen. Tom Carper.

We are glad to see GSA speaking out in support of maintaining funding for such projects.

The Government Accountability Office concluded that major projects funded through the E-Gov Fund "could potentially lead to benefits including cost savings and efficiency, customer service transparency, and governmentwide collaboration and information sharing." The report [PDF], released last Friday, focused on four of the sixteen projects supported by E-Gov in FY 2010, two of which were subsequently eliminated because of budget cuts in FY 2011. The E-Gov Fund supports projects that expand the government's abilities to carry out its activities electronically.

The report generally recommended that some programs incorporate additional performance metrics, a recommendation that GSA, which administers the E-Gov Fund, endorsed. It also noted that the two eliminated programs, the Citizen Services Dashboard and FedSpace, had respectively taken  "significant steps" and made "progress" towards meeting their goals; the Dashboard had a pilot up and running with four agencies and FedSpace had released a beta version that had 500 users. A list of programs funded by E-Gov is available below (as identified in the report). Funding declined precipitously from $34 million in FY 2009 and 2010 to $8 million in 2011, resulting in the termination of these programs and the suspension of development in many others.

While this funding cut was widely considered to be short-term, recent developments suggest the cuts may persist, freezing programs at current levels and preventing any improvements or new initiatives. While the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee endorsed restoring funding up to $15.8 million earlier this year, the Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved a further cut to $7.4 million. In addition, the E-Gov Fund was combined with another fund, raising the risk that its unique role in fostering a specific type of governmentwide technological innovation could evaporate.

In the following video, David McClure, the GSA Citizens Services Associate Administrator, briefly discussed the cuts to E-Gov when he testified before the House on September 21, 2011. He notes that "when anyone gets less money than requested, something's got to give."

After the huge fight over the House's support for Electronic Government Fund, which pays for many important transparency programs like Data.Gov and USASpending.Gov, we had high hopes that the Senate would restore funding to prior levels. Our hopes have been dashed.

In a vote yesterday on legislation that has only come to light today, the Senate Appropriations Committee dropped E-Gov funding by an additional $11m below the House's levels -- and the House is already $15-20m below the FY 2010 funding level. The Senate merged the E-Gov Fund with the Federal Citizen Services Fund, and appropriated $39m for newly combined fund. The House had appropriated $50m.

By comparison, just two years ago (in FY 2010), the two funds received a total of $71m, with $34m for e-gov and $37m for the Federal Citizen Service Fund. (Last year the e-gov fund was shockingly cut to $8m, far out of line from the previous two years funding and partly the result of a strange budget cycle; the Federal Citizen Service Fund was appropriated $34m.)

What does this mean? It's difficult to know how funds will be allocated between E-Gov and FCS programs, but we have some idea based on this letter from (former) federal CIO Vivek Kundra to Senator Tom Carper. Many programs will be terminated. Data quality will suffer. No fixes or improvements to current programs are likely.

That's too bad. The public's ability to see how the federal government spends money on USASpending.gov, for example, can help root out waste, fraud, and abuse, while promoting smart decisions in these tough economic times. Sharing government information on Data.gov can spur new businesses and more efficient government, if only agencies are appropriately encouraged and helped to make use of it. Senator Carper called earlier proposals to cut the E-Gov Fund "penny wise and pound foolish." He's right.

It's also embarrassing. The President is about to give a speech before the United Nations on Tuesday about our new open government commitments, and this paltry funding level sends the wrong message. We risk abandoning our role as a leading advocate for open government.

Theoretically, the next opportunity to fix these funding levels is when the bill goes to the floor of the Senate. It's unclear whether any amendments can be offered, and if so, what their likelihood of success would be. With the major differences between the House and Senate versions of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, what's most likely is that Congress will pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open while dickering over these differences.

Under a CR, the General Services Administration, which administers these funds, will have to assume that the lower number -- $39m -- is the amount of funding allowed for the year. Programs will come to a screeching halt while Congress tries to agree upon a full year appropriations bill. (This start-again-stop-again approach also wastes tons of money.) With the upcoming election, each day will make agreement harder and harder. It is too bad that the Senate is willing to sacrifice a lot of transparency for such a small amount of money. Especially when small investments in transparency yield huge dividends.

The House Appropriations Committee will markup the Financial Services Appropriation Bill, which sets funding levels for the Electronic Government Fund, this Thursday at 9:30 in 2359 Rayburn. This follows on last week's subcommittee vote to partially restore e-gov funding to around $13m for FY 2012 from $8m in FY 2011, which is far less than the $34m appropriated in FY 2010 and 2009. Unlike that hearing, this one is expected to be webcast.

Assuming the legislation passes the House Appropriations Committee, which it is likely to do, it will go to the House floor for a vote, and then to the Senate. It's likely that the Senate will not adopt the legislation in its current form.

House Appropriators released draft legislation [PDF] on Wednesday that appears to increase funding levels for the Electronic Government Fund, the source of financial support for government financial and data transparency websites, in a hint of things to come at tomorrow's mark-up. The e-gov fund suffered a huge cut from $34m in FY 2010 to $8m in FY 2011, which put many of its programs on life-support and terminated others, and has been the subject of a campaign by transparency advocates (including Sunlight) to restore full funding. The legislation was released 24-hours before a House Appropriations Committee Financial Services Subcommittee mark-up, scheduled for some time on Thursday morning. UPDATE 6/16: the subcommittee approved the legislation without amendment.

In a legislative twist, funding for the Electronic Government Fund appears to have been combined with funding for the Office of Citizen Services, making it difficult to figure out how much money will actually go towards e-gov websites. My best guess is that the legislation would increase the money available for e-gov to $13m from the $8m appropriated in FY 2011, which is still far off from the $34m available in FY 2010.

Where does this guess come from? Well, the draft legislation would appropriate $50m to e-gov and OCS, and last year OCS was cut from $37m to $34m. If we assume that OCS has been returned to a $37m funding level, that leaves $13m for e-gov. (It could be that OCS funding will not be fully restored, so more money would go towards e-gov, but there’s no way to know.) Combining these two funds together may have some logic to it, as the GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Information Technology maintains projects built under both of those funds.

What does this mean in practical terms? Were the House Appropriations Subcommittee’s text to be untouched during mark-up and adopted into law, the e-gov fund would marginally improve, moving from life support to critical condition. Enough money might be available to either make some improvements to its existing transparency programs, or perhaps to add a new program, but not much more than that. Progress on improving transparency websites and access to data would be slow, fitful,  and uneven -- but possible.

A critical test for the funding level comes this Thursday morning, when the House Appropriations Subcommittee will mark-up the text, meaning that it will review, amend, and (likely) vote to approve the legislation. This is the best opportunity in the House for real changes to be made to the bill. Hopefully the e-gov fund will receive a financial boost during this process.

Unfortunately, the hearing will take place in a tiny room in the Capitol, so it is very difficult for members of the public to attend. It won’t be webcast, despite House rules requiring committees to “provide audio and video coverage … in a manner that allows the public to easily listen to and view the proceedings,” so you can’t watch the action online. We’ve run into this problem before. My colleague Melanie will try to attend, but given the space constraints and significant interest in the mark-up, odds are slim that she’ll be able to get into the room.

Assuming the bill is passed out of subcommittee this week, it will go to the full Appropriations Committee next week, which will likely simply endorse the actions of the subcommittee, although there is a slim chance for amendment. After that, it will advance to the floor of the House for a final vote, and then go to the Senate. The whole process will start again, and we have hope that the Senate will fight to fully fund e-gov.

Of course, we’ll be following this each step of the way. And everything could change during mark-up.

Here’s the legislative language from the House Appropriations Subcommittee text:

INFORMATION AND ENGAGEMENT FOR CITIZENS For necessary expenses of the Office of Citizen Services, including services authorized by 5 U.S.C. 3109, and 24 to carry out the E-Government Act of 2002 (Public Law 25 107–347), $50,000,000: Provided, That the revenues and collections deposited into the Federal Citizen Services Fund shall only be available for necessary expenses of Federal Citizen Services activities in the aggregate amount not to exceed $60,000,000: Provided further, That revenues and collections accruing to the Fund during fis-cal year 2012 in excess of such amount shall remain in the Fund and shall not be available for expenditure except as authorized in appropriations Acts.