Last Friday, the Sunlight Foundation participated in a “data transparency town hall” hosted by the Treasury Department to hear from stakeholders on DATA Act implementation.

The town hall served as an opportunity for a wide range of DATA act stakeholders to share their perspectives with government actors and each other. There were representatives from public interest, industry, the federal government, state and local governments and more. Topics covered ranged from technical talks around data standards and implementation to a look at “why is Federal spending transparency important.”

Luckily, the Treasury Department has posted slides and text from all the talks, including those given by government employees.

Sunlight highlighted projects like Clearspending and Six Degrees of Corporations that proved the importance of some of the reforms contained within the DATA Act. We focused our comments on two issues that we believe to be key as Treasury and OMB move forward with implementation of the DATA Act.

1. We urged the Federal government to “dump DUNS” and incorporate non-proprietary identifiers in their spending data standards.
2. We asked Treasury and OMB to conduct their policy making process in an open way, highlighting some online tools that will help them achieve that goal.

You can view the comments, as written, below or read it here.