This morning, Vice President Joe Biden announced a major initiative to identify and eliminate government waste – the “Campaign to Cut Waste.” As Biden was announcing the initiative, President Obama issued a new executive order authorizing the main components of the campaign. The expansion of accountability measures for federal spending is a welcome and productive move by the administration.

The new effort seeks to build off the success of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (Recovery Board) overseeing the hundreds of billions spent under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus bill. Biden credited the Recovery Board with keeping fraud and waste at an all-time low for recovery spending, thanks to new computer modeling and data analysis tools. Biden stressed the importance of deterring fraud before it ever occurs and praised the work of Earl Devaney, chair of the Recovery Board, for establishing a model that can be applied to all of government.

The executive order, “Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government,” expands aspects of the Recovery Act oversight to operate government-wide. First, the E.O. establishes an Accountable Government Initiative that will require cabinet-level agencies to regularly meet with the vice president to discuss progress on identifying waste. This type of regular oversight discussions with agency officials was seen as successful for the Recovery Board. The goals of the Accountable Government Initiative were first announced last September through an OMB memo from OMB Deputy Director for Management Jeffrey Zients, who is also the federal Chief Performance Officer.

The E.O. also assigned responsibilities to other officials, including Zients, who will lead on identifying practices that should be adopted across agencies and in facilitating reforms that require cross-agency coordination and cooperation. The director of OMB will provide agencies with guidance for identifying program overlap and duplication for the FY 2013 budget process. Within agencies, Chief Operating Officers are designated as the Senior Accountable Officials responsible for leading performance and management reform efforts, while the Chief Financial Officers will be responsible for achieving agency cost savings.

The E.O. also establishes a new Government Accountability and Transparency (GAT) Board to be made up of 11 members designated by the president from among agency Inspectors General, agency Chief Financial Officers or Deputy Secretaries, a senior official from OMB, and such other members as the president designates. This board, similar in responsibility to the Recovery Board, will provide strategic direction to agencies on this campaign and regularly report to the vice president. The board is also tasked to with reporting to the vice president in six months with proposals for integrating systems that collect and display government spending.

It is likely that Devaney will play a leadership role in the GAT Board, since Biden introduced Devaney and heavily praised him. Even as such, there was no formal announcement that Devaney or other members of the Recovery Board will be selected to be part of the new GAT Board or if the administration will simply seek to recreate the successful effort with new people. The Recovery board is set to expire in 2013 with the final expenditures under the Recovery Act.

Biden noted that the creation of the GAT Board is being coordinated in a bipartisan fashion with members of Congress. Demonstrating that support, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) plans to introduce a bill at any moment that transforms the Recovery Board into a Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board (FAST Board). The FAST Board would consolidate USAspending.gov, Recovery.gov, and other federal spending websites and oversee a new website or portal to websites. The FAST Board would also have oversight responsibility like the GAT Board to prevent waste and fraud in government spending.

Yesterday, both the Senate and House addressed Section 929I of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which granted the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) a very broad exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would limit the exemption. Almost simultaneously, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to explore the issue of the need for such a broad exemption.

Public access advocates and government accountability groups have expressed concern that the provision grants SEC too much authority to withhold critical oversight and accountability information related to our financial system and thereby potentially reduce our ability to prevent future financial crises.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who introduced the Senate legislation (S. 3717) to restrict the provision, agreed with the raised concerns and said the provision "could be interpreted and implemented in a way that undermines the important goal of restoring transparency and accountability in our financial system."

Leahy’s efforts received strong bipartisan support. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Edward Kaufman (D-DE) joined Leahy in co-sponsoring S.3717. And the Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the bill without amendment.

During the House Financial Services Committee hearing, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro sought to sponsoring clarify the perceived need for the original provision to improve the cooperation of financial institutions with SEC examinations. Schapiro explained: “Section 929I enhances the Commission’s ability to examine regulated entities by making clear that the Commission may protect, in appropriate circumstances, information gathered in the examination process from the many entities it regulates, supervises or examines.” Shapiro also asserted that the agency’s intention to narrowly interpret the provision.

However, both Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) testified in opposition to the FOIA provision. Towns claimed that despite the SEC promises of narrow interpretation, “the SEC has already indicated its willingness to exploit this loophole. In an action the SEC brought against a broker-dealer, the Commission tried to use section 929I to avoid an Administrative Law Judge's order to comply with a subpoena.” Towns has introduced H.R. 6086, to limit the agency’s authority to withhold information.

Angela Canterbury of the Project on Government Oversight, a government accountability public interest group, noted the SEC’s “history of wielding these exemptions to withhold more than it discloses” and urged the committee to repeal the provision by passing the Towns legislation. Canterbury went further and recommended Congress request SEC’s Inspector General conduct regular audits of the agency’s FOIA implementation as a means to bring the agency’s actions into better compliance with policies that direct agencies to favor disclosure.

The House Financial Services Committee has not yet scheduled a time to consider H.R. 6086 but given the attention on the issue, may move quickly to do so. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of S. 3717 means the legislation could receive a floor vote at any time.

Today, the Obama administration releases a slew of plans, memos and other materials in its Open Government Directive process. All cabinet level agencies, as well as many independent agencies, are releasing Open Government Plans that layout what each agency will do to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. In addition to the plans, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued memos on policy clarifications on the Paperwork Reduction Act, the creation of a regulatory identification number, and long term federal spending transparency.

The agency Open Government Plans probably represent the largest single coordinated effort by the federal government to make itself more transparent, participatory and collaborative. While not everything being released is a major leap forward, this process being established provides the public with a major vehicle to achieve continual improvements. Almost all the agencies have described the plans a first step or version 1.0 of their open government efforts, with plans to collect reactions and input and update the plans regularly.

A brief review of several agencies’ Open Government Plans reveals that there are plenty of impressive efforts being made throughout government:

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched a Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Dashboard that allows the public to search, analyze and visualize Medicare spending. The dashboard brings together publicly available data from multiple locations into a single, more intuitive interface. HHS also committed to upgrading the CMS Dashboard with additional data and features by fall 2010. The agency is also plans to release 14 new high-value data sets by the end of 2010, 12 of which have never been public before.


• The Department of Labor launched an online enforcement database containing information on inspections the department conducts to ensure businesses are complying with the nation’s worker rights and safety laws and regulations. The database contains a wealth of information (for example, users can comb through the litany of accident reports filed at mines owned by Massey Energy, proprietor of the West Virginia mine in which 25 workers were killed Monday) but is too difficult to use at this point. Search and sort functions are limited, but DOL says it will continue to implement upgrades to the database.


• The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Community Engagement initiative focuses on improving participation by the public in EPA activities. The effort includes the development mobile applications to empower citizens. The agency provided several mobile application examples including a Save Your Skin app that would inform people of UV index warnings in their area, an air quality index app that would notify users about air quality issues in their zip code, and a green product app that help consumers consider impacts of products before purchasing them.


• The Department of Justice announced plans to create a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Dashboard to provide easy access to comprehensive data on FOIA compliance at 92 federal agencies. The FOIA process, though a fundamental and essential tool for government transparency, has received limited attention from many agencies over the years. If this Dashboard provides the public with the tools to truly analyze agencies’ FOIA performance, it will create a significant new incentive for all agencies to find ways to improve their implementation of the law.

These and other projects contained in the dozens of Open Government Plans coming out will no doubt need to be tweaked and expanded. But it is they represent strong positive steps toward a government that is open and honest with the public about its actions and performance on critical issues.

As you probably know, the Obama administration released the Open Government Directive this morning.  OMB Watch applauds this latest effort to create a more open and accountable government.

In this season of gift giving, the results appear to be well worth the wait.  The president called for progress on three main principles – transparency, participation, and collaboration and the directive delivers on all three with specific requirements and deadlines for all agencies.  The directive was comprised of four main components centered on very simple but important themes – publishing information; creating a culture of openness; improving data quality; and updating policies to allow for greater openness.  

We are especially pleased to how many of the issues and concerns raised by the right-to-know community in the report called Moving Toward a 21st Century Right to Know Agenda. Among the 70 detailed recommendations in the report were requests for creating incentives for openness, interagency coordination, and publication of high-priority data that is currently unavailable – all of which are addressed in the new directive.

However, the proof is in the pudding.  Implementation over the next few months will reveal how much new transparency we will actually receive from this process.  This first step, the instructions to the agencies, has gone well, now our work must focus on ensuring the next step, implementation by agencies, goes equally well and produces substantive change.

Photo by flickr user seagers, used under a Creative Commons license.