On Tuesday, the House passed the Senate's amendments to the Government Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Performance Improvement Act (HR 2142), also called the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. The bill now heads to President Obama for his signature.

The bill institutes a range of reforms to government performance management and planning. Among the changes are a number of transparency and reporting requirements which will significantly expand the amount of information available to the public about government performance.

Agencies will be required to post online their quadrennial strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance reports. Performance reports for the first time will be required to include information on the data's accuracy and validity, and any limitations of the data.

In addition, the bill requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the first time to create a government-wide performance plan, and requires that the plan be posted online. The government-wide and agency plans will reference each other, identifying how each agency contributes to overall goals.

Initially, each agency's documents are required be posted on the agency's website. Starting FY 2012, all the performance documents must be posted on a single website in a searchable, machine-readable format.

That site will also contain information on all agencies' programs, including each program's description, how it contributes to the agency's mission and goals, and its funding level. The website will also list priority goals for agencies and the government overall, and will post quarterly results for each goal. The site will identify programs, policies, and tax expenditures contributing to each goal, with an assessment of whether or not they're working.

Making such a vast amount of new information available online could shed valuable light on how well federal agencies and programs are performing. The new site could potentially be a powerful tool in helping citizens to understand what they get for their money – and to demand that under-performing programs shape up.

But effectively communicating complex information about the performance of thousands of federal programs will be no mean feat. The right metrics and a coherent presentation will be needed to make the site accessible.

The requirements codify many of the elements detailed in a September 2010 OMB memo announcing performance.gov. That site is currently accessible only to government officials, although the memo indicated plans to open it to the public.

An interesting provision passed in the earlier House version but left out of the final legislation would have required linking programs' performance to their spending on USASpending.gov. It also would have required a report on the feasibility of including performance and spending information in a single site.

The Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on December 8, 2009 included a mandate that all agencies create a data quality plan that enhanced the transparency of how agencies spend federal funds.  Two weeks ago, these plans were supposed to be finalized and released to the public but so far we can only find one agency’s plan.

On Feb. 8, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Jeff Zients issued a memo outlining a timeline for public release as well as what information should be contained in the data quality plans.  Data quality plans were due to OMB by April 14.  OMB was to work with agencies to improve their plans and finalize them by May 14.

The OGD required that agencies to be accountable for the quality of federal spending information that is publicly disseminated through public venues such as USASpending.gov and similar websites.  The plans were to address problems agencies currently encounter with this information.  These include duplicate data, missing data and transactions, inaccurate data, and untimely data.

Now, two-weeks after the finalization date, the only plan we have been able to find is that created by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  EPA’s plan is a good review of what the agency current does to ensure data quality.  However, the plan leaves much to be desired and we hope that it is not a sign of things to expect from other agencies.

There’s plenty of room for improvement in this plan.  EPA’s plan could do more to give the public a full understanding of their efforts to enhance their capacity for data quality improvement instead of simply outlining its current practices.  For instance, there is no mention of participation and collaboration plans to gather feedback from the public as required by Zients’ Feb. 8 memo.  In identifying deficiencies in their process to ensure completeness of federal spending information, EPA does not provide possible solutions or list the steps they are taking to remedy them.  I’m also not sure what EPA means when it identifies “the possibility that information would be used for purposes it was not designed for” as a risk of information release.  That’s not a legitimate risk of releasing information.  The release of personally identifiable information, which is a legitimate worry, is not even mentioned.

In discussing their current program of monitoring for data quality we see a couple of things the EPA could do to enhance transparency.  First, the EPA mentions compliance reviews performed in each contracting office at least once every three years through its Quality Assessment Plan.  How about making the results of these reports public?  Secondly, it discusses quarterly reports distributed by the Office of Acquisition Management concerning year-to-date acquisition data.  Releasing this information to the public in a collaborative and participatory way can dramatically help the agency improve its existing program.  However, the plan makes no mention of efforts to do so.

EPA can still improve its plan and hopefully the plans that come forth from other agencies will go further.  Still, EPA should be applauded for at least coming out with a plan on time.  It remains unclear as to whether agencies met their deadline to report to OMB and if OMB has provided feedback to all agencies concerning their plans.  The White House's open government dashboard does not track agency progress on the plans.

Today, March 9, is the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s scientific integrity memo which instructed his staff to produce within 120 days recommendations for ensuring independence of federal scientists and limiting political interference in their work. 365 days later, we’re still waiting.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is critical of the delay. Francesca Grifo, director of UCS’s scientific integrity program, had this to say:

While the new administration has been generally supportive of scientific integrity values, it's moving too slowly to establish badly needed reforms. The current system still discourages scientists from communicating about their research results, for example. It still keeps the public in the dark about the scientific basis for policy decisions, and it still rewards staffers who keep quiet about political interference in science. 

The criteria Obama laid out in his March 9, 2009, memo are admirable: hiring and keeping qualified scientists; defining new policies to ensure integrity; using “well-established scientific processes” like peer review; disclosing scientific findings; ensuring that scientific integrity principles are being adhered to; and adopting additional policies like whistleblower protections.

But by failing to follow up with a concrete set of reforms, Obama and John Holdren – the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy who was tasked with developing recommendations – are sending a terrible message to those who believe scientific integrity ought to be a priority for this administration.

Interference in science reached new heights under President George W. Bush; but just because Bush is gone does not mean the problems go away too. As OMB Watch discusses in the latest issue of our e-newsletter The Watcher, a new report from the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) proves that much work remains. SKAPP interviewed federal scientists during both the Bush and Obama administrations, and found that although there were a few bright spots in scientists' views of the changes that had occurred, a majority felt similar frustrations.

Couple this delay with the now year-plus delay on Obama’s effort to improve the regulatory process by writing a new executive order, and my outlook on the administration’s commitment to government reform is dimming.

Photo by Flickr user davidfntau. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Yesterday, a group of organizations, including OMB Watch, submitted concerns with the high-value datasets published on Data.gov in compliance with the requirements of the Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on Dec. 8. The OGD required that agencies submit at least three high value datasets within 45 days through Data.gov.   These groups outlined the major problems with the site and its implementation thus far.  I have summarized these issues below.

Yesterday, a group of organizations, including OMB Watch, submitted concerns with the high-value datasets published on Data.gov in compliance with the requirements of the Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on Dec. 8. The OGD required that agencies submit at least three high value datasets within 45 days through Data.gov.   These groups outlined the major problems with the site and its implementation thus far.  I have summarized these issues below.

Format & Usability

A major concern of the community is that releasing data in specific formats may make it more usable to coders and the tech-savvy, but not to the general public writ large.  If data is solely released in formats such as XML or CSV leaving the majority of the public unable to decipher these raw formats then Data.gov’s attempt to make the government more transparent has failed.    What good is information if we can’t read it?

The solution?  We proposed that the administration strike a balance between releasing data in machine readable formats and presenting the data to the public through web-based interfaces.  Web-based interface can be designed in a user-friendly way that aggregates the raw data for quick and convenient access.

Definition of High Value

The OGD mandated that agencies release three “high-value” datasets on Data.gov.  However, the Sunlight Foundation noted that only 16 of the 58 datasets posted by major agencies were previously unavailable.  The vast majority of released datasets were already online but not in machine readable format.  This meant that the administration only picked the low-hanging fruit in its first data release.  On the other hand, the data was now available in a central location and in a better format.

Still, this leaves open the question of how the government is defining “high value.”  According to the Open Government Directive, high value data is information that can be used to increase agency accountability and responsiveness; improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations; further the core mission of the agency; create economic opportunity; or respond to need and demand as identified through public consultation.  Yet, the agencies do not have to demonstrate how the releases they submit qualify under these categories.  To resolve this issue we expressed the need for such a requirement.  Other things we asked for:  notations that indicate which datasets are already available and unavailable as well as datasets that help hold agencies accountable for their policies and spending decisions.

Data Quality

This third issue mainly centers on the fact that some datasets could not be opened, were missing portions, or missing headers.  Missing headers, of course, means the data cannot be used even by coders.  Moreover, it was discovered that some of the datasets were being quietly removed from the site without public notification.

Here, we stressed the need for a better feedback mechanism than what exists on the site.  We made the point that there needs to be a system to report problems with specific datasets.  Further, we asked that all datasets on Data.gov be directly associated with their code sheets.
Ultimately, this is a great first step in showing the amount of data the agencies are capable of putting out in machine readable format.  Never before have we been able to access so much raw data in one place.  Despite the short deadline for this disclosure, several executive agencies released more than the required three datasets.  The implementation, however, needs to be improved through  creating public facing interfaces, requiring agencies to demonstrate the value of the data, and by providing a means of user feedback.

In order to improve Data.gov and the range of data included on the site, the administration is welcoming comments on its blog, Join the Dialogue. Additionally, Data.gov allows users to rate each dataset for ease of access, usefulness, data utility, and an overall ranking.

To read the group’s arguments and other points of contention in full, see the letter we sent here.  Feel free to give us your feedback.