This morning Federal News Radio reported on a new memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget regarding the data quality of federal contracting data in a publicly available database, the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). The memo is another in a long succession of memos since 2008, requiring each agency procurement official to certify the percentage of their agency's contracts that are available in the public contract spending database. That's a great idea! Let's hold procurement officials accountable if they have anything less than 100% of their contracts reported to the public! There's just one problem: these reports, intended to hold officials publicly accountable, are not public.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Acquisition Advisory Panel, as well as OMB itself, have acknowledged the data quality problems with the contracting data in FPDS. Yet every year, their response is to issue a memo, requiring each agency to come up with a data quality plan and submit it privately to OMB and the General Services Administration (GSA). This year, agencies must also complete a statistical sampling portion of the report, to assess the accuracy of their data, but many of the other requirements are the same. Maybe the way to fix these reports is to make them public, instead of slightly updating them and reiterating your commitment to improved data quality in the press. We believe that OMB's knowledge of gaps or problems with the public contracting data should be ... well, public! We filed a FOIA in September of 2010, asking for the data quality reports detailed in the aforementioned OMB memos. Here we are, nine months later, and we still don't have a response to our FOIA.

Keeping these reports private is a lie of omission to citizens and watchdog groups who want to use this contracting data to make sure our government contracting process is free of fraud and abuse. Agencies already keep track of the original contracts privately, using a separate database (FPDS) to disclose only certain elements of them to the public. It's incredibly disappointing that parts of this secondary, already less than complete, contracting database are censored.

Last fall, we conducted a data quality analysis of the grants data present in USASpending.gov. We called the project Clearspending. Basically, we used another source of government data that provided annual spending estimates for each grant program and compared it with the grant totals for each program in USASpending.gov to see how close they were. We also looked to see if spending was reported completely, and on time (full methodology here). We found nearly $1.3 trillion worth of spending that either didn't match with the other government data, was late, or incompletely reported.

That's a lot of money.

The project got some attention both at the Gov 2.0 Summit later that year, a House Oversight Committee hearing several weeks ago and a House Energy and Commerce hearing last week. The obvious follow-up question that we get all the time is "Where is Clearspending for Contracting?". Well, what we're missing is another dataset to use for comparison with the contracts data in USASpending.gov. It's difficult to find annual estimates for each agency broken down by contract spending, that isn't from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), which is the feeder system for USASpending.gov. However, in the course of our research, we did find that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required agencies to submit to them something called an "FPDS Data Quality Report", since at least FY 2008. The requirement is detailed in this OMB memo and includes a template for the data quality report.

The template in the report requires the senior procurement executive from each agency to certify the total dollar amount spent on contracts for that fiscal year and what percentage of this dollar amount is present in FPDS. They also must describe their processes for measuring and improving data quality. Essentially, it's an internal (read private) document that describes the quality of a public contract spending database. We asked OMB politely for this information and were flatly denied. Our next step was to file a FOIA request for the data. We filed the request and it was received on September 29, 2010. Today is May 12th, 2011, and we still don't have it. It hasn't been denied, it just hasn't been fulfilled. This far exceeds the statutory requirement for fulfilling FOIA requests, and runs counter to the administration's pledge to increase transparency, specifically through bettering the FOIA process.

These reports provide a clear description of the usefulness and reliability of the contract data available in USASpending.gov, a website created entirely to disclose spending data to the public. Withholding these reports is violating the spirit of the law that created USASpending.gov, if not the letter.

The White House is characterizing their failure to replace Ethics Czar Norm Eisen as an upgrade. If they wanted to vigorously pursue the portfolio assembled under Eisen, though, they could have replaced him, and fit a new person into the empty slot.

Instead of filling an existing position, though, the White House is carving up Eisen's portfolio, and transferring those responsibilities to the White House Counsel, Bob Bauer, who already has a full plate of Presidential issues. This could bode poorly for some of the issues Sunlight cares about most. Here are some of the issues that will now apparently have to vie for the White House counsel's attention:

Earmark Transparency: In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama called for a single searchable database of all earmarks and earmark requests. In the months since then, we've seen bills introduced in the House and Senate, and a bill reported favorably out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The time is ripe for earmark transparency to be solved through online disclosure, and yet the White House has remained silent since the SOTU address.

Open Government Directive: The Open Government Directive can either become a dated, rhetorical memo, or a transformative commitment to a new era of openness. Only if the White House holds agencies to their requirements and plans can the Directive have real force. OMB Director Orszag has left, and with Eisen leaving, enforcement faces more uncertainty. When the public compliance dashboard doesn't meaningfully differentiate between failure and progress toward meeting expectations (compare the yellow to the red in this chart), we can expect clarity in enforcement to continue to be a concern.

Citizens United: The White House is clearly committed to passing a legislative fix to the Supreme Court decision, but will the legislative fight get the attention it needs to succeed?

Whither Ethics.gov?: Ethics.gov was a campaign promise to build a single website with ethics and accountability information to transform government accountability. Does this have any hope of still happening?

Lobbying Disclosure Reform: President Obama also called for reform of lobbying regulations in his State of the Union. While the White House frequently rails against special interest lobbying and disproportional influence, will they have the bandwidth to push for real solutions to this real problem?

Executive Disclosure: The White House made some meaningful first steps in posting ethics filings online, requiring extensive stimulus lobbying disclosure, and posting the Visitor Logs records online for the first time. These aren't well established policies, though, and need a steady hand and a clear commitment to mature into permanent, reliable, effective policies. Will the White House Counsel's office take on these challenges?

Regulatory Failure: In the wake of the failed Minerals Management Service, the Executive continues to fight entrenched incompetence, conflicts of interest, and ineffective regulation. Will the administration respond sufficiently to the oil spill, and the myriad other regulatory failures it represents? Will the ethics and disclosure systems at the heart of our regulatory system get the thorough analysis and reform they desperately need?

These are just some of the issues Sunlight cares deeply about, and they are among the many others our broader community fights for, like whistleblower protection, records management, or regulatory reform.

As we look at the rearrangement in the White House, we're left wondering not just whether they can succeed without a dedicated Ethics Czar, but whether they could succeed if they had hired three of them.

This is a pretty important speech from OMB Director Peter Orszag. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here's a key section:

Public sector productivity growth matched the private sector’s until about 1987. But something changed in the late 1980s. From 1987 until 1995, private sector productivity rose by an average of 1.5 percent a year. Meanwhile, the public sector’s productivity rose by only 0.4 percent per year – or about one-third as much – over roughly the same period. ...

...I believe that the biggest driver of this productivity divide is the information technology gap.

At one time, a federal worker went to the office and had access to the most cutting-edge computer power and programs. Now, he often has more of both in a device clipped to his belt.

Closing the IT gap is perhaps the single most important step we can take in creating a more efficient and responsive government.

Indeed, the IT gap is the key differentiator between our effort to modernize and reform government and those that have come before. ...

How big is this IT gap?

It is hard to quantify, but anecdotally the data are telling.

Let’s consider the divergence in data center usage. In the private sector, IBM has reduced the number of data centers it uses from 235 to 12. Hewlett-Packard has consolidated 14 data centers into one, reducing energy usage by 40 percent.

What about the federal government?

Since 1998, we have gone from 432 data centers to more than 1100.

Earlier this year, the White House's Office of Management and Budget requested comments on improving the Paperwork Reduction Act. The law requires agencies that wish to gather information from the public to first run their plans by OMB. In revisiting the law and its implementing regulations, OMB is focused on:

• Reducing current paperwork burdens, especially on small entities;
• Increasing the practical utility of information collected by the Federal Government;
• Ensuring accurate burden estimates; and
• Preventing unintended adverse consequences.

One of the unintended adverse consequences of the PRA arises in the Internet context, with what the government deems "surveys." Government websites may not use surveys, even when compliance is strictly voluntary, without first receiving approval from OMB in a process that is lengthy and laborious.

Agencies interpret the term "survey" broadly, banning or restricting tools that would allow users to publicly rank or assess the usefulness of information. This restricts online rating systems like those commonly used by blogs, retailers, and so on. For example, imagine YouTube without its five-star rating system, or Slashdot without the ability to vote for stories.

We address the survey issue in a comment we submitted to OMB late last year.

The approval process for a survey can take half a year or more and requires multiple periods for public comment. The law intentionally creates disincentives for surveying the public.

The authors of the Paperwork Reduction Act never considered the ways that the Internet would allow citizens to directly communicate with one another on government websites through the use of voluntary surveys. Nor did they imagine that surveys could be as quick and easy as clicking yes or no. The law was intended to make the government more efficient and reduce the burden on citizens. 15 years into the Internet age, it's time to take another look.

If you've ever tried to research federal contracts you'll find that the databases used to house those contracts online are not so great. Sen. Claire McCaskill held a hearing yesterday titled, "Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases." Nancy Scola wrote up the hearing and it isn't pretty:

All told, there are a million lines of code involved. But there's really no all told here, because the databases don't talk to one another. For example, FPDS, the Federal Procurement Data System doesn't communicate with EPLS, which stands for Excluded Parties List. Which means that theUSASpending.gov website -- heralded as the American public's window into the inner-workings of government, but powered by FPDS -- doesn't even know that contractors contained within it have been banished from government service for defrauding the United States government or otherwise behaving badly. What's more, on some of these legacy systems, a search for Contractor X, Inc. won't return results for Contractor X Inc. The shorthand for that particular wrinkle came to be known, during the hearing, as "the comma problem."

In fact, GAO's William Woods explained to the senators, the poor state of those databases meant that when his agency was asked by Congress to detail how many contractors were billing the United States government for work in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government watchdog group was forced by technology to admit its ignorance. "We could not answer those questions," said Woods. How many KBRs are at work in American war zones, being paid with taxpayer dollars? How many Blackwaters? Dunno.

The biggest problem, however, didn't turn out to be the current state of disrepair, but rather the inability to figure out what to do with the whole disclosure regime. To the surprise of almost everyone in the committee room, the General Services Administration (GSA) has been working to create a more sensible contractor disclosure regime with a more accessible public face. It was difficult for federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to identify who exactly would be overseeing the -- yes -- contract to revamp the databases. Ultimately that responsibility came down to either the GSA, the Office of Management and Budget or the Office of Federal Procurement.

As Scola writes, "Senator Robert Bennett spoke for many of us today when he sat up on the dais in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and rubbed his temples over, and over, and over, and over again."

Today is 120 days after President Obama's Open Government Memo, released on his first full day in office: January 21st, 2009.

In case you're wondering what's formally due today, or whether anything is late, here's what the memo requested:

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

The Directive itself isn't due today, as has been widely suggested.

When President Obama issued a memorandum to "ensure the responsible spending of recovery act funds," he required members of the executive branch to report or make publicly available certain lobbying communications while avoiding engaging in others. However, both his memorandum and later OMB guidance appear to have a big gap: they overlook communications between lobbyists and the executive branch about stimulus policy.

President Obama's memorandum imposes the following requirements on executive branch officials who are contacted by registered lobbyists about the economic stimulus legislation:

1. No lobbyist can verbally communicate with a member of the executive branch about "particular projects, applications, or applicants for funding."

2. A lobbyist can communicate in writing with a member of the executive branch about "particular projects, applications, or applicants for funding." However, the executive branch staffer must publish the written communication -- the document -- on the agency's web site within 3 days.

3. A lobbyist can verbally communicate with a member of the executive branch about policy matters. The executive branch staffer must record information about the communication (names, dates, clients, and subject matter) in a form, and post that form online within 3 days.

4. A lobbyist can communicate in writing with a member of the executive branch about policy matters. The executive branch staffer neither needs to record information about the communication nor place the written communication -- the document -- online.

It is this fourth point that is odd. Why should written communications about policy matters be treated differently from verbal communications about policy matters? Or treated differently from the submission of funding request documents to executive branch staff? The point of placing information online is to allow public scrutiny, and yet there is a huge gap. There is no reason to believe that this omission is any more than an oversight (no pun intended). I didn't even realize the loophole existed until I tried to diagram the disclosure process.

I suggest considering a new rule: all written communications about stimulus policy matters must be placed online within three days. Placing the documents online would make them easily searchable and increase transparency. It would also save the executive branch staff member the time required to evaluate the document's contents to determine whether it is related to policy or contains a specific funding request.

It would be interesting to know who is contacting the administration in support or opposition to its stimulus lobbying disclosure requirements. (Documentation of the Sunlight Foundation's meeting with Norm Eisen on this issue can be found on the White House web site.) Also, it's not clear to me whether discussions of broad areas of policy -- e.g., requesting more funds be devoted to the defence sector -- would be characterized as a policy matter or a specific funding request. Reframing the topic shouldn't be a way to get around the disclosure rules.

From a practical standpoint, I understand that placing online every written communication from a registered lobbyist about  the economic stimulus is a nontrivial task. But asking lobbyists to send written information electronically is not a big ask, and would support President Obama's goal of ensuring  "the responsible spending of recovery act funds."