The House has released its omnibus budget bill, which totals 1,582 PDF pages. While sifting through this massive piece of proposed legislation, we noticed a curious provision that requires some clarification.

Section 717, on page 566 of the pdf file, states: “None of the funds made available in this Act or any other Act may be used to provide any non-public information such as mailing, telephone, or electronic mailing lists to any person or any organization outside of the Federal Government without the approval of the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

Within the context of adjacent sections, this provision appears to be designed to stop the government from selling or otherwise sharing personal information (such as addresses and emails) to outside companies, which could use that personal information for marketing purposes. The provision is so broad, however, that it creates possible implications for transparency more generally. The language could effectively prevent funds from being used for the disclosure of any non-public information — including government contracts, reports and other documents — under the Freedom of Information Act, as part of Project Open Data or as part of a proactive disclosure policy.

If, indeed, the motive behind the provision was to protect personal information specifically and not to prevent disclosure of non-public data more broadly, at a minimum, the language should be changed to read: “None of the funds made available in this Act or any other Act may be used to provide any non-public personally identifiable information such as mailing, telephone, or electronic mailing lists to any person or any organization outside of the Federal Government without the approval of the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate.” This could be further strengthened by expressly indicating that the provision is not meant to shelter government employees, contracting officers, for example, from accountability under the Freedom of Information Act or other oversight and transparency legislation.