Entity information served as the beating heart of Recovery.gov. Unfortunately, that information is no longer available thanks to the government's reliance on proprietary DUNS numbers.
Continue readingRecovery.gov dumps DUNS, highlighting need for open entity IDs
A trove of data will soon disappear from Recovery.gov. It's a relatively minor blow for transparency in the end, but highlights a problem with how the US government tracks the entities it does business with.
Continue readingAs DATA Act Markup Looms In Senate, Groups Announce Support For Introduced Version
Today, a coalition of groups and individuals concerned with open government urged the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental... View Article
Continue readingThe News Without Transparency: Federal Cash Flow to Nonexistent Districts
In 2009 the Washington Times reported that an investigation conducted by researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity... View Article
Continue readingThe News Without Transparency: Obama-Backed Solar Firm Collapses After Big Federal Loan Guarantee
A relatively unknown private company filing for bankruptcy is not usually a major national news story. When the solar energy firm... View Article
Continue readingSolyndra Loan Guarantee Data Not in USASpending.gov
The Department of Energy and Solyndra have been in the news lately. It’s a pretty high profile case of a... View Article
Continue readingWhat Can Recovery.gov Tell Us About Ice Cream?
It's been a while since recovery.gov was in the headlines. ARRA money continues to go out the door, but it's safe to say the program is winding down. The Administration has been taking a quiet victory lap, including this charming video, in which Vice President Biden calls up an ice creamery in Santa Cruz that got off the ground thanks to a Recovery Act loan:
Here's a crazy idea: why don't we look up this loan on recovery.gov and see what else we can discover about it?
Continue readingGov2.0 Presentation: An Open Government Scorecard
I was absolutely delighted to present at the Gov2.0 Summit here in Washington this morning. Thanks to Tim OReilly and... View Article
Continue readingProject updates on Recovery.gov lack clarity
A Texas company that received $14,675 in economic stimulus money submitted a mandatory progress report to the federal government using just two words: “door mats.” A California solar energy company went to the other extreme, using technical language that gave little insight of what it did with a half-million dollars in taxpayer money.
“The purpose of the reports is to allow the citizens to know where the [stimulus] money is going and what is being used for,” said Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at George Mason University who is monitoring the process on his website, www.stimuluswatch.org ...
Whither Transparency
The New York Times this morning took the Administration to task because White House officials and lobbyists are meeting at... View Article
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