Among President Obama‘s few significant legislative accomplishments during his brief tenure as a Democratic senator from Illinois was the creation in 2006 of a website to disclose how the federal government spends tax dollars.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., co-sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act with Obama and 44 other senators. The measure was informally known as “Coburn-Obama” and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
Coburn-Obama was promised to provide a “Google-like search engine and database” to put most federal spending “within a few mouse clicks of everybody with an internet connection.”
But eight years later, less than seven percent of USASpending.gov’s information is accurate, and $600 billion in federal expenditures aren’t included in its database, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The problem USASpending.gov failed to solve was the multiple formats used by federal departments and agencies to report spending. One thing that was needed was a common “unique identifier” used across the government.
That’s why House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa of California introduced the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, picking up where Coburn-Obama left off in making federal spending more transparent for taxpayers.
The DATA Act was co-sponsored by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight panel. It was co-sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Obama signed the DATA Act into law May 9.
“The reforms of this bipartisan legislation not only move the federal bureaucracy into the digital era, but they improve accountability to taxpayers and provide tools to allow lawmakers and citizen watchdogs to root out waste and abuse,” *Issa said when Obama signed the law.
“Government-wide structured data requirements may sound like technical jargon, but the real impact of this legislation on our lives will be more open, more effective government,” Issa said.
Whether the new law works any better than its predecessor, however, will be determined by how well executive branch officials turn what Congress directed into an actual government program.
It was under the purview of the Office of Management and Budget that USASpending.gov, with its woefully high inaccuracy rates, was implemented. Overseeing DATA Act implementation will be OMB’s task, too.
In fact, the Congress-driven DATA Act reforms came into being despite opposition from President Obama’s OMB.
Then-OMB Director Danny Werfel said there was no need for the DATA Act because the Obama administration was already “leading in the open government area,” according to the Data Transparency Coalition.
As a result, government transparency advocates are cautiously optimistic about the legislation, heralding it as an important step forward but noting that Obama hasn’t appeared to put his weight behind it.
Obama “quietly” signed the DATA Act into law after the business day closed on a Friday, the Sunlight Foundation noted, even though the White House has often touted its commitment to transparency.
“Passage of the DATA Act was merely the first step towards truly transforming federal spending information. Successfully implementing the bill is key, and the OMB — one of two offices given power under the DATA Act — has not seemed particularly interested in doing so,” Sunlight said.
“Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a former OMB director and one of the original Senate cosponsors of the DATA Act, and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who helped shepherd the DATA Act through [Congress], made it clear that they are committed to embracing their oversight role and ensuring that the DATA Act is effectively implemented,” according to Sunlight.
“Unfortunately, [OMB head Shaun] Donovan’s level of knowledge, and OMB’s level of commitment, was a bit less obvious,” Sunlight said.
The new method of tracking federal spending across the many agencies is modeled after a system used to enable public tracking of the 2009 economic stimulus spending.
Recovery.gov included a website that followed the money from the government to recipients of contracts and awards, and then down to the subcontractor and sub-recipient levels.
That allowed GAO to identify numerous instances of fraud and reporters to uncover scams such as the use of minority preference fronts to gain federal contracts.
The use of unique identifiers is slated to be expanded — an arcane but important way in which all money to a given entity can be tracked, even if there are multiple subsidiaries or spellings of a company’s name.
But USASpending.gov, too, had many of these same goals. So success of the DATA Act will depend on a zealous commitment to follow-through.
“We were hopeful that the White House would recognize the excitement from civil society, the private sector, various offices in the federal government, and Congress and throw some of its energy behind the DATA Act,” Sunlight said.
“Without passionate backing from the White House, this important legislation could easily wither and die during the implementation process,” Sunlight wrote.
That was in June. Now, four months after the bill was signed into law, OMB has said little about its progress.
