Recovery Act Reporting: Data Quality vs Data Integrity

[1]One of the important dynamics at play in the Recovery Act is the relationship between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Both agencies have similar missions. Theoretically, OMB implements the Recovery Act, and the Recovery Board oversees the law's transparency provisions. But when the rubber hits the road, so to speak, on Recovery Act transparency policy issues, it is not always clear which agency is in charge.

Recently, Earl Devaney [2], chair of the Recovery Board [3], has been trying to clarify his organization's role in the recovery. Yesterday, Devaney sat down with Propublica's Christopher Flavelle, and talked about the line between OMB and the Recovery Board. Here's the key line from the interview [4]:

"The division of labor, as I view it, is that we [the Recovery Board] are in charge of the Web site, and that OMB is in charge of the data requirements and the data quality."

This line echoes a similar quote my colleague Craig Jennings wrote about [5] on Monday, that "data integrity is the job of this board. Data quality is the job of OMB, working with federal agencies to correct errors or misinformation in recipient reports.'' The Recovery Board, Devaney is saying, is simply in charge of protecting and presenting the Recovery Act data, with no spin.

This is a fairly minimalist stance, and unfortunately it still does not clarify who is responsible for data quality. Devaney is pointing to OMB, OMB is pointing to the agencies, the agencies are pointing to the contractors, and the contractors right now don't have much of an incentive to report perfect, or even good, information. Ideally, someone at the federal level will step in, and take responsibility for data quality. We're hopeful that the new Recovery.gov [6] is going to be a great website, but it will only be as useful as the data reported to it.

In any case, if you haven't yet, you should go read Devaney's Propublica interview [4].