    [Senate Hearing 111-728]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 111-728

                        REMOVING THE SHROUD OF SECRECY:
                       MAKING GOVERNMENT MORE TRANSPARENT
                        AND ACCOUNTABLE--PARTS I AND II

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                   before the

                    FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT
                       INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND
                      INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE

                                     of the

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                   HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                                     of the

                         ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                          MARCH 23 and APRIL 13, 2010

                                   __________

           Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

                           Printed for the use of the
            Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

                      U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    56-893                    WASHINGTON : 2010
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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            COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
    CARL LEVIN, Michigan                 SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
    DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii              TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
    THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
    MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas              GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
    MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana          JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
    CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri           LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
    JON TESTER, Montana                  ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
    ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois
    PAUL G. KIRK, JR., Massachusetts

                      Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
         Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
                      Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
                                     ------

     SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION,
                  FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

                      THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman
    CARL LEVIN, Michigan                 JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
    DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii              TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
    MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas              GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
    CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri           JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
    ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois

                        John Kilvington, Staff Director
                    Erik Hopkins, Professional Staff Member
        Bryan Parker, Staff Director and General Counsel to the Minority
                       Deirdre G. Armstrong, Chief Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                     ------
    Opening statements:
                                                                       Page
        Senator Carper............................................... 1, 25
        Senator Coburn...............................................    15
    Prepared statements:
        Senator Carper.............................................  47, 51
        Senator McCain...............................................    49
        Senator Coburn...............................................    53

                                   WITNESSES
                            Tuesday, March 23, 2010

    Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer and Administrator
      for Electronic Government and Information Technology, Office of
      Management and Budget..........................................     5
    Hon. Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer and Associate
      Director for Technology, Office of Science and Technology
      Policy, Executive Office of the President......................     7
    Hon. David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, National
      Archives and Records Administration............................     9
    Ellen Miller, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Sunlight
      Foundation.....................................................    23

                            Tuesday, April 13, 2010

    John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation............    27
    Stephen W.T. O'Keeffe, Founder, MeriTalk Online..................    29
    Thomas Blanton, Director, National Security Archive, George
      Washington University..........................................    33

                         Alphabetical List of Witnesses

    Blanton, Thomas:
        Testimony....................................................    33
        Prepared statement.........................................  85, 97
    Chopra, Hon. Aneesh:
        Testimony....................................................     7
        Prepared statement...........................................    61
    Ferriero, Hon. David S.:
        Testimony....................................................     9
        Prepared statement...........................................    67
    Kundra, Vivek:
        Testimony....................................................     5
        Prepared statement...........................................    54
    Miller, Ellen:
        Testimony....................................................    23
        Prepared statement...........................................    72
    O'Keeffe, Stephen:
        Testimony....................................................    29
        Prepared statement.........................................  79, 93
    Wonderlich, John:
        Testimony....................................................    27
        Prepared statement...........................................    89

                                    APPENDIX

    Robert Pinkerton, Director, Public Sector Solutions, Adobe
      Systems, Inc., prepared statement..............................    75
    Stephen W.T. O'Keeffe, Founder, MeriTalk, prepared statement with
      attachments....................................................    79
    Thomas Blanton, Director, National Security Archive, George
      Washington University, prepared statement......................    85
    Questions and Responses for the Record:
        Mr. Kundra...................................................   101

                        REMOVING THE SHROUD OF SECRECY:
                       MAKING GOVERNMENT MORE TRANSPARENT
                            AND ACCOUNTABLE--PART I

                                  ----------

                            TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2010

                                     U.S. Senate,
            Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management,
                  Government Information, Federal Services,
                                  and International Security,
                          of the Committee on Homeland Security
                                            and Governmental Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:31 p.m., in
    room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R.
    Carper, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Carper and Coburn.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

        Senator Carper. Well, good afternoon, everyone. The
    Subcommittee will come to order.
        Senator Coburn and I were talking back in the anteroom
    about what is going to happen on the floor. It will be
    interesting to see what happens on the floor this afternoon,
    but we are going to go ahead and get started, and we will see
    how far we can go. We appreciate that our panel of witnesses
    could be here today. We will do as much as we can, and if we
    have to, we will just recess or adjourn and come back around
    midnight. [Laughter.]
        Well, maybe not that late, but it looks like we could be
    here for a long time tonight. Hopefully you will not have to
    be. But our thanks to our guests and our witnesses for joining
    us today. For the next hour or so, we are going to discuss ways
    that President Obama and his team of Open Government experts,
    some of whom are here today, can reshape old and inefficient
    bureaucratic agencies into lean--not so mean--citizen-focused
    machines.
        We have also invited a panel of outside experts to testify
    on areas where the Administration is doing well, what areas
    they may need to apply a bit more attention, and more
    importantly, how making agencies more open and transparent will
    make the lives of America's 300 million citizens better.
        I am told that Albert Einstein once said that,
    ``Information is not knowledge.'' Now, I would also like to
    quote Albert Einstein who said, ``In adversity lies
    opportunity.'' I have never heard this quote, but my staff told
    me that he also said, ``Information is not knowledge.'' And I
    think that statement is as true today as it was then. In the
    21st Century, information is power.
        In fact, some would say that the U.S. economy has
    experienced a surge in job and wealth creation over the past
    three decades because of the information revolution and
    advances in technology. But like any other tool, information
    unto itself does not do us a lot of good unless we know how to
    use it.
        For example, just because we simply possess a hammer does
    not mean a house will build itself, but if we know how to use
    the hammer, then we can see how a house can be built and go
    right ahead and build it. I think the same is true with
    government information.
        So we called this hearing not only to see what agencies
    need to do to open up their treasure troves of information, but
    also I would like for us to learn how releasing this
    information will reduce wasteful agency spending, make senior
    leaders more accountable, and improve, we hope, the lives of
    everyday Americans.
        On his first day in office, President Obama took an
    extraordinary step in signing an Open Government Directive
    which instructed agencies to open their operations to the
    public. The idea behind the directive is that a more Open
    Government allows members of the public to contribute ideas and
    their expertise to government initiatives. This collaboration
    will hopefully improve the effectiveness of agenies by
    encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the Federal
    Government, across levels of government and between the
    government and the private sector.
        Further providing more government information by default
    instead of by exception will help reduce the financial and
    administrative burdens on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
    process and spur innovation in the private sector. But as our
    Administration moves forward on these new and exciting
    initiatives, I want to make sure that we are sticking to
    fundamentals.
        For example, I am told that despite the fact that
    legislation such as the Presidential Records Act and the
    Federal Records Act have been law for decades, agencies have
    done an abysmal job when it comes to preserving their physical
    and electronic records. In fact, it was only 2 years ago when
    we held a hearing that touched on the fact that the Bush White
    House could not locate millions of e-mails, including those
    from the 3 months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. That type
    of situation is just unacceptable, and we need to make sure
    that it is not repeated again.
        Further, as our witnesses may know, I joined Senators
    Coburn and McCain and a former Senator named----
        Senator Coburn. Obama.
        Senator Carper. Senator Obama, a few years ago when he was
    a mere mortal, passed the Federal Funding, Accountability, and
    Transportation Act under the leadership of the fellow sitting
    here to my right. My colleagues and I put forward this
    legislation to increase the transparency and accountability of
    the Federal Government by providing access to information on
    Federal spending through a single, searchable, publicly
    available Website. However, the Government Accountability
    Office (GAO) recently released an evaluation of
    USAspending.gov, the Website created as a result of Senator
    Coburn's legislation, and it seems that there have been some
    problems.
        For example, GAO stated that there were widespread
    inconsistencies between the information provided on
    USAspending.gov and the actual physical records of
    transactions. And, furthermore, the Office of Management and
    Budget (OMB) apparently does not hold agencies accountable for
    ensuring that information placed on the site is accurate and
    reliable. So before we start pushing agencies to spend time and
    money on releasing more information, we want to make sure that
    the information we have is reliable and accurate.
        In closing, then, I will just add that as we discuss all
    the new, exciting initiatives that the Administration has
    underway or plans on undertaking in the near future, we need to
    keep our eye on the ball. Our job does not just end at making
    information freely available, but in making sure that the
    information can be effectively used to improve services to
    every American, to reduce wasteful spending, and to enforce
    accountability.
        Again, thanks to our witnesses for taking your time to be
    here with us today and for sharing your ideas on these and
    other important issues. I am not going to recognize Senator
    McCain, although my script says to do that, but I do want to
    recognize the Senator from Oklahoma whose initials I share and
    whose passion I share for trying to make government work
    better, more cost effectively.
        And I want to say, Senator Coburn, it was an honor to join
    you and a couple of our colleagues a number of years ago to
    pass legislation that we thought at the time could do a great
    service to this country. And I do not think we have realized
    its full potential yet, but we now have an Administration here
    that seems to be intent on making sure that we do reach that
    potential, and when we do, you are going to get a lot of
    credit.
        So thanks very much for being here today.
        Senator Coburn. Thank you. Well, welcome to each of you.
    The President and I and Senator Carper and Senator McCain
    worked very hard to put into place one of the tools we thought
    that American citizens could hold us accountable by. I must say
    I am significantly disappointed at both the quality and the
    depth of information that is available. I applaud President
    Obama for wanting to make more steps towards transparency, but
    I would caution him that if we cannot do the first one, the
    simplest one, and we cannot do it well, why would we start off
    on other areas until we got the first one right?
        So I look forward to your testimony. I have a lot of
    questions about the Transparency and Accountability Act. It is
    of no value when the vast majority of the money is
    subcontracted and we do not have any intent or have the
    information with which to hold subcontractors, sub-grantees,
    sub-awardees, accountable. Let me just give you two examples.
        During Hurricane Katrina, we paid the Corps of Engineers
    $60 a cubic yard to get rid of the debris. The guy on the
    ground eight layers lower was getting $6 a yard. We consumed
    $54 in sub-grantees before we picked up the first cubic yard of
    debris, and we paid 10 times more for that than what the actual
    cost of picking up the debris and hauling it off was. If we are
    not going to do sub-awards and sub-grantees, there is no reason
    to have the site in the first place.
        The other thing that is very dangerous about it is we are
    creating an expectation of the American public, and then we are
    going to pop the balloon. If the American public goes there
    thinking they can find out and it is not available--it was not
    just for Congress that we asked this.
        The other thing I would note is by June 30 of this year the
    law mandates--it does not say you may, it says you will have
    put in place a system to measure sub-grants, sub-awards, so
    that everybody in this country can see it. I am going to have a
    lot of questions in that regard.
        I know it is a tough effort. I do not deny that. But unless
    we have the OMB pushing down and holding the agencies
    accountable, it is never going to happen. I would like to see
    as much emphasis in fixing the Transparency and Accountability
    Act as the Administration plans to put on these other wonderful
    areas of transparency that we need. But if their results are
    the same as the Transparency and Accountability Act, we are
    going to create more disappointment in the American public.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Carper. Thank you, Senator Coburn.
        I want to turn to our witnesses and go ahead and introduce
    them. We may start voting at about 2:45 p.m., and if we do, if
    we just have one vote, Dr. Coburn, I do not know if you want to
    tag-team and I could stay here until maybe you could run and
    vote and then come back. But just think about that, if that
    might work for you. That way we can keep going.
        Senator Coburn. I will try to do that.
        Senator Carper. Good. Thanks so much.
        Let me just start by introducing our first three witnesses
    today. First we have a familiar face who is no stranger before
    this Subcommittee. Vivek Kundra is the Federal Chief
    Information Officer of the United States and responsible for
    overseeing the Federal Government's management of information
    technology. He comes to us most recently from the District of
    Columbia where he was recognized by InfoWorld as one of the top
    25 chief technology officers not just in the District of
    Columbia, not just in the United States, but around the world.
    Congratulations and we thank you very much for your service. We
    thank you for being here and for the dialogue that we have
    enjoyed in the past year or so.
        Next up we have the Hon. Aneesh Chopra, who is the Chief
    Technology Officer of the United States. I understand that Mr.
    Chopra and Mr. Kundra are the ones responsible for tag-teaming
    President Obama's technology and transparency initiatives. Mr.
    Chopra comes to us from the Commonwealth of Virginia where he
    was the Secretary of Technology. Who was the governor then? Not
    Warner.
        Mr. Chopra. Tim Kaine.
        Senator Carper. Tim Kaine, OK. I am told that you and Mr.
    Kundra also served together in Virginia at the same time. Is
    that right?
        Mr. Chopra. Yes.
        Senator Carper. OK. We are grateful for you to be here
    today and serving together once more.
        The final witness is the Hon. David Ferriero, Archivist of
    the United States and the head of the National Archives and
    Records Administration. Essentially, he is the defender of our
    Nation's history. That is a heavy burden to carry. He has
    previous experience at the New York Public Library, at MIT, and
    he is a veteran of the U.S. Navy.
        We thank you, Mr. Ferriero, and the rest of our panelists
    for taking the time to be with us here this afternoon. I am
    going to recognize Mr. Kundra to begin with his opening
    statement. I was able to read everyone's written statements, so
    if you want you can summarize for about 5 minutes. If you go a
    couple minutes over that, I will not rein you in, but if you go
    too far over, then I will have to. But we look forward to
    having a great dialogue here with you this afternoon. Thank you
    so much for your preparation and for your presence and for your
    willingness to have this discussion with us today. Thank you.
        And your entire statements will be made part of the record,
    for each witness.
        Mr. Kundra, you are recognized.

    TESTIMONY OF VIVEK KUNDRA,\1\ FEDERAL CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
      AND ADMINISTRATOR FOR ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION
              TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

        Mr. Kundra. Good afternoon, Chairman Carper, Senator
    Coburn, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the
    opportunity to testify about how this Administration is working
    to make government more transparent and accountable for the
    American people.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Kundra appears in the Appendix on
    page 54.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        On his first full day in office, President Obama signed the
    Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. This
    Administration is laying a new foundation that changes the
    default setting of the government from closed, opaque, and
    secretive to transparent, open, and participatory. I would like
    to talk about Open Government not as an abstract idea or
    notion, but specifically how it is driving innovation,
    improving performance, and changing the way we serve the
    American people.
        Opening our government allows us to draw upon the knowledge
    of all Americans, not just those inside the Beltway of
    Washington. The Federal Government does not have a monopoly on
    the best ideas, nor does it have unlimited resources. We have
    seen how third parties can create tremendous value when given
    the opportunity.
        The Department of Defense's decision to release Global
    Positioning System (GPS) data sparked innovations that touch
    our daily lives, helping us reach our destinations throughout
    the country and helping first responders save lives.
        To unlock the value of public data, we launched data.gov
    last May with just 47 data sets. Now there are over 169,000
    data sets on every aspect of government operations, from public
    safety to the environment to health care. In just 10 months,
    third parties have already used these data sets to build
    applications that serve the American people such as
    FlyOnTime.us, which allows travelers to check wait times at
    security lines across the country and also view airline on-time
    performance.
        As we democratize data, we must also foster an innovation
    ecosystem to support the creative use of these data sets. That
    is why OMB released guidance this month to increase the use of
    prizes and challenges across the public sector and will launch
    a challenge platform to facilitate innovation.
        The concept of challenges and prices goes back to at least
    1714 when the British Government offered 20,000 pounds to
    anyone who could develop a method to calculate a ship's
    longitude. The prize motivated clock maker John Harrison to
    develop the marine chronometer which solved the problem in a
    simple and efficient way.
        Open Government also helps keep the government accountable.
    As the President said in his inaugural speech, ``Those of us
    who manage the public's dollars will be held to account to
    spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the
    light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust
    between a people and their government.''
        Last June, we launched the IT Dashboard, which allows the
    American people to monitor Information Technology (IT)
    investments across the Federal Government. Last July, the
    Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) halted 45 IT projects that
    were significantly behind schedule or over budget, identified
    in part thanks to the IT Dashboard. In terminating 12 of these
    projects, the VA avoided wasting $54 million of taxpayer money.
        Building on the foundation of the IT Dashboard, we launched
    face-to-face evidence-based reviews of IT programs called
    TechStat Accountability Sessions. These sessions enable
    government officials to collaborate with one another to turn
    around or halt IT investments that do not produce dividends for
    the American people.
        As we continue to open up our government, we must balance
    our decisions with protecting the privacy of the American
    people and safeguarding national security. Individual pieces of
    data, when released independently, may not reveal sensitive
    information, but when they are combined, this mosaic effect
    could be used to derive personal information or information
    that is vital to national security.
        The government, unfortunately, has a history of not
    managing data quality from accuracy to completeness to
    timeliness. To improve data quality, OMB released the Open
    Government Directive on December 8, 2009. This directive
    actually requires every agency to designate a senior official
    accountable for data quality, objectivity, and internal
    controls across financial spending.
        On April 7, 2010, OMB will release a strategy for sub-award
    reporting to help carry out the vision of the Federal Funding
    Accountability and Transportation Act that this Subcommittee
    fought for. To provide better insight into Federal spending, we
    will launch an improved USAspending.gov platform. We are just
    at the beginning of what can be accomplished. Imagine
    enterprising Americans and government officials working
    virtually alongside one another to co-create the next
    generation of public services. Imagine being able to create and
    share dashboards on demand, powered by data, to shed new light
    into government performance in the same way that we share
    YouTube videos with our family and friends.
        Open Government is not an abstract notion. It is a new way
    of doing business in Washington. The Obama Administration is
    committed to make the Federal Government work better for the
    American people.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
    your questions.
        Senator Carper. Thanks for your excellent testimony. Very
    well delivered, thank you. Mr. Chopra, please proceed.

     TESTIMONY OF HON. ANEESH CHOPRA,\1\ CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
     AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND
          TECHNOLOGY POLICY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

        Mr. Chopra. Thank you, Chairman Carper and Senator Coburn.
    I would like to expand upon my colleague's testimony with
    particular emphasis on how we are harnessing technology, data,
    and innovation to improve the lives of everyday Americans.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Chopra appears in the Appendix on
    page 61.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        In my capacity as the Chief Technology Officer, I've had
    the honor and privilege of working with the American people in
    developing the recommendations that form the basis of our Open
    Government Directive per the President's instructions in that
    memorandum that he signed on his first full day in office.
        Over the course of 2 months starting last May, we held an
    unprecedented consultation process that surfaced over 900
    ideas, thousands of public comments, and over 300 draft
    versions of Open Government recommendations. The directive that
    we published December 8, 2009, referenced many of those
    recommendations and serves as an aggressive timeline for our
    entire Federal Government to meet specific milestones towards
    greater openness, including the publication of new high-value
    data sets on Data.gov.
        Now, what does Open Government mean to the American people?
    When the Department of Agriculture makes nutritional
    information available, parents can make smarter eating choices
    for their families. When the Department of Education makes key
    information available about colleges and universities, students
    can make more informed choices about the quality and cost of
    their education. When the Department of Labor makes information
    on workplace risks and hazards available, employers can improve
    the safety of their workplaces for employees.
        I would like to highlight three examples to better
    illustrate our approach and its current impact on the American
    people.
        On the topic of innovation, our engine of economic growth,
    as we all know, is born on the ingenuity of America's small
    businesses. To that end, I am pleased to announce that today
    the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will
    begin providing data on awardees of the Small Business
    Innovation Research Program that utilize a new streamlined
    process for contracting and will extend this streamlined
    process to future Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
    solicitations. Initially, DARPA will display data on the number
    of awardees that are eligible for this streamlined process, how
    many awardees have opted for it, and the average number of days
    it has taken to complete the streamlined agreement.
        As an example, Mr. Chairman, typical contracting in this
    domain might take 5 to 6 months to complete. But we believe
    that this streamlined approach will take, on average, less than
    60 days. That represents a 60- to 70-percent reduction in both
    time and cost, savings that will help small businesses
    throughout the country in achieving lower costs and getting
    them to work faster on the important projects we have in front
    of them.
        In energy, we recently concluded a Smart Grid Forum online
    which focused on the impact the Nation's energy consumers will
    have in promoting innovation in smart grid products and
    services. Specifically, we invited all Americans to participate
    in a discussion on how best to deploy the smart grid, with
    particularly engaging discussions occurring on data access and
    consumer ownership.
        The thoughtful comments that we received will help our
    Nation accelerate the development of innovations to address
    some of the most challenging smart grid goals that we have,
    from deployment of smart grid solutions to the development of
    standards needed for the exchange of data, to ensuring
    cybersecurity in the smart grid. Put simply, Mr. Chairman, I
    want to know my energy usage on a real-time basis in my home,
    and this process helped to bring that forward.
        In education, on February 15, Education Secretary Arne
    Duncan announced the launch of the Open Innovation Web Portal
    at innovation.ed.gov, bringing together key stakeholders in
    education, including those who previously had no voice or way
    to elevate their ideas, in a collaborative manner so that those
    ideas can turn into reality. The Open Innovation Web Portal is
    a trial initiative that has engaged many stakeholders in
    education--from teachers to school administrators, parents and
    foundations, nonprofits and for-profit organizations alike--all
    to develop the innovations that our country desperately needs
    to achieve our President's goal to be the Nation with the
    highest percentage of college-educated citizens. The Department
    of Education has posted an initial set of challenges to engage
    the community around the Department's key priorities, including
    human capital and data.
        Again, Mr. Chairman, to make it simple, if a teacher in
    Delaware has a terrific idea to help kids understand physics
    better, this portal will allow that individual to find
    development capital from the philanthropic community so that
    the idea can be tested, validated, and scaled.
        Last, Mr. Chairman, I would like to end my remarks on how
    our commitment to an open and transparent government is
    surfacing and executing on the very best ideas from everyday
    Americans.
        Last August, President Obama challenged the 19,000 front-
    line workers within the Veterans Benefits Administration to
    reduce the backlog of disability claims and streamline
    processing. Todd Bonn, a dedicated veterans service
    representative from the offices in Togus, Maine, submitted an
    idea through the VA's Innovation Initiative Website to improve
    certain performance metrics to get the agency to focus more on
    results and less on process. He was one of 7,000 participants
    submitting and voting on over 3,000 ideas from each of the 57
    regional offices within the Veterans Benefits Administration
    (VBA). His colleagues in Maine prepared a business plan that
    was pitched to a panel of national leaders, including Craig
    Newmark from Craigslist. Todd's idea was one of 10 selected for
    implementation, and what is remarkable about this is that his
    idea will take very little time and effort to reprogram the
    performance database. VA will implement this initiative by the
    summer at no incremental cost to taxpayers. Todd's story is yet
    another example of how this Administration is leveraging the
    principles of Open Government to meet our Nation's challenges.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your time, and, of course, we
    look forward to answering your questions.
        Senator Carper. You bet. Thank you again for an exciting
    and, I think, uplifting bit of testimony. Thanks so much.
        We have started the vote. I am going to try, if possible,
    to allow Mr. Ferriero to finish his testimony, but if we run
    short, we will have to run out and come back in a little bit.
    But I think we have two votes, and I think we will be able to
    just bear down and stay here. Thank you.
        Mr. Ferriero, go ahead.

    TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID S. FERRIERO,\1\ ARCHIVIST OF THE UNITED
          STATES, NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

        Mr. Ferriero. Thank you for inviting me to participate in
    this hearing on making government more transparent and
    accountable. The last time I appeared before you was my
    confirmation hearing in September, so it is truly an honor to
    return. I would also like to thank you for the opportunity to
    testify alongside two visionary leaders whose work I deeply
    admire, Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopra.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ferriero appears in the Appendix
    on page 67.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        As the Subcommittee knows, on December 8, 2009, President
    Obama issued the Open Government Directive with the aim of
    making our government more accessible and accountable by
    improving transparency, public participation, and collaboration
    in and among the Federal agencies. This directive was
    enthusiastically received by the National Archives for the core
    of our mission is serving democracy by providing access to the
    essential documentation of the rights of American citizens and
    the actions of their government.
        NARA's own Open Government plan describes how we are
    providing guidance and services to assist Federal agencies with
    carrying out their plans. Our Records Management Program
    provides guidance for agencies on the records management issues
    highlighted in the Open Government Directive. Our National
    Declassification Center is taking a leadership role in ensuring
    that over 400 million pages of classified records in NARA
    holdings are declassified and made available to the public by
    the end of 2013.
        Our Office of Government Information Services has provided
    Questions and Answers on the Open Government Directive which
    outlines transparency issues that are relevant to the Freedom
    of Information Act.
        Today, however, I would like to focus my testimony on what
    I feel is the backbone of Open Government records management.
    To put it simply, the government cannot be accountable if it
    does not preserve and cannot find its records. Although I have
    only been in the job for 5 months, I have seen and heard enough
    to be concerned that across the government we are falling short
    in our records management responsibilities, particularly in
    regard to the exponential growth of electronic records. The
    long-term success of the Open Government Initiative--and the
    future of the National Archives--hinges on the ability of each
    Federal agency to effectively manage their records.
        At the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA),
    our records management approach is grounded in these three
    principles: Agencies must economically and effectively create
    and manage records necessary to meet business needs; records
    must be kept long enough to protect rights and assure
    accountability; and records of archival value must be preserved
    and made available for future generations.
        NARA's National Records Management Program is made up of
    nearly 100 full-time staff members. They have the enormous job
    of working with Federal records officers in over 250 different
    Federal agencies. They develop policy, guidance, and training.
    They conduct studies so others can learn best practices and
    avoid costly mistakes. They also work with agencies to conduct
    self-assessments of records management programs. This is part
    of the Archivist's statutory authority to conduct inspections
    and report findings to the appropriate oversight committees and
    the Office of Management and Budget.
        Most notably, they work with agencies to schedule and
    appraise records. This is how we ensure proper documentation of
    our government's actions. The statutory authority to grant
    Federal agencies disposition authority to manage their records
    is the most important responsibility I exercise as Archivist of
    the United States, because it determines what records will come
    to the National Archives for permanent preservation and access.
        Given that records management is the backbone of Open
    Government, the central question is: What is needed to ensure
    that Open Government values are realized and that NARA's
    mission is accomplished?
        My answer has two parts. First, heads of agencies and
    senior leaders across the Federal Government need to understand
    that the records and information they and their organizations
    are creating are national assets that must be effectively
    managed and secured so that the public can be assured of the
    authenticity of the record. Heads of agencies and senior
    leaders need to be held accountable for managing these assets.
    This is required by law in the Federal Records Act, but
    moreover, it is good government and a necessary condition of
    Open Government.
        In the next 30 days, NARA plans to send to Congress and OMB
    a report based on agency self-assessments carried out in
    September 2009. Our preliminary analysis of the data suggest
    that 79 percent of reporting agencies have moderate to high
    levels of risk associated with their records management
    programs, particularly with electronic records. These levels of
    risk in agencies should be a great concern to all who believe
    in open and accountable government.
        Second, senior agency leaders must work with NARA, OMB, and
    GSA, as well as with groups like the CIO Council, the Federal
    Records Council, and the Federal Web Managers Council, to
    develop the IT tools necessary to manage electronic records.
        The technical challenges associated with developing the IT
    tools for records management are not insignificant; however,
    these tools do not exist today because, in my view, the Federal
    Government has not deemed recordkeeping a high priority in IT
    systems. The Federal Government spends over $70 billion
    annually on information technology that, to a large degree,
    creates or receives Federal records in some form. Developing
    cost-effective electronic records management tools that work
    and then integrating them into agency IT systems needs to be a
    high priority.
        In conclusion, as Archivist of the United States and the
    leader of over 3,000 dedicated National Archives employees, I
    would like you to know that we are committed to doing all we
    can to carry out the National Archives mission to provide
    access to the essential documentation of the rights of American
    citizens and the actions of their government and to build an
    Open Government that values transparency, citizen
    participation, and collaboration.
        Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you
    today, and I look forward to answering your questions.
        Senator Carper. Mr. Ferriero, thank you very much, and my
    thanks really to each of you for setting the stage for what I
    think is going to be a very interesting and I think very
    productive and helpful hearing.
        We start off, first of all, it looks like we have two votes
    back to back. I have 7 minutes to get there. I am going to
    recess for probably about the next 20 minutes, and we will be
    back. Dr. Coburn may come back before I do.
        We will be back shortly, and we look forward to asking
    questions of our first panel. But thank you for getting us off
    on the right foot.
        With that, the Subcommittee stands in recess for roughly
    the next 20 minutes. Thank you.
        [Recess.]
        Senator Carper. All right. You have all been having enough
    fun. Back to the salt mines. Thanks for hanging in here, folks.
    Good to be back with you. We had two votes, and if we are
    lucky, we will be able to get this hearing in without any
    further interruptions. We could be in session all night, but
    fortunately you will all be spared that.
        I have a couple of questions for folks on this first panel,
    and one of the things to do is I love to go into schools. I
    think we have over 200 public schools in Delaware. I also think
    I have been at almost every one of them over the years. And
    whenever I visit a school, kids ask really great questions.
    Some are really funny questions, too. For example, are you
    married to a movie star? Do you live in a mansion? Do you have
    a limousine? And on and on and on. Sometimes they ask me what
    do I like about my job. One time a kid not long ago asked me
    this question: ``What do you do?'' [Laughter.]
        I thought that was a pretty good question. And I said,
    well--he was in elementary school. I said, ``Do you have rules
    in your school?'' ``Yes.'' ``Do you have rules on your bus?''
    ``Yes.'' ``Do you have rules at home?'' There was kind of a
    mixed message on that one. But I said, ``My role is to work
    with other Senators, Representatives, and the President and
    Vice President to help make the rules for our country.'' And I
    said, ``Just like you have rules in your school and on your bus
    and at home, we have rules for our country. We call them
    laws.'' And he said, ``Oh, I get that. I get that.''
        What do you do? How would you explain your job? Because a
    lot of what we are going to cover here today and what we have
    covered in hearings leading up to this day can be another world
    for some people. The topics may not make that much sense, and
    it is hard to relate to what we are actually talking about. But
    when people say, ``What do you do?'' I want you to explain it
    in simple terms. And then I am going to ask some questions to
    follow up and see if we cannot bring what you are talking about
    here today to terms that it will be real in the lives of most
    people in our country.
        Mr. Kundra, do you want to go first? What do you do?
        Mr. Kundra. Sure. So, simply put, what I would say to a
    school kid is essentially when you apply for college and you
    have to fill out that student aid application, part of my role
    is make sure that the Department of Education is using
    technology to make your life easier; or when your parents have
    to go online and interact with their government, it is to make
    sure that they can easily interact, whether it is filing taxes
    or filing for a passport. It is to use technology ultimately to
    serve the American people.
        Senator Carper. Good. Thank you. Mr. Chopra.
        Mr. Chopra. Oh, man, that is a hard one to follow.
        Senator Carper. I am sure you are up to it.
        Mr. Chopra. Mr. Chairman, I would describe my role as
    producing three P's. The first of those P's is to ensure that
    we have the right policies that harness technology, data, and
    innovation for national priorities. The second is to make sure
    that we make thoughtful investments in platforms, that is, a
    modest investment in the public sector spurs a much larger
    investment in the nonprofit sector to expand and leverage the
    goal. And then the third is to support public-private
    partnerships, and that often means no new laws and no new
    funding, but a way to bring, as the President described, an
    ``all hands on deck'' approach to advancing a certain priority.
        I am happy to engage on any examples in those domains, but
    that is essentially what I focus on.
        Senator Carper. Good. Thank you. Mr. Ferriero.
        Mr. Ferriero. And I am the records guy. My job is to make
    sure that we are collecting, protecting, and encouraging the
    use of the records of the government.
        Senator Carper. All right. The folks that all of you serve,
    we think they are interested in Open Government. A lot of them
    say that they are. How is Open Government going to help them
    from your perspectives, each of you?
        Mr. Kundra. Well, so in a big way, if you think about the
    innovations we have seen across the board, there has been this
    Old World view that the public sector has a monopoly on
    innovation and creating solutions. But if you think about just
    Apple, for example, and how Apple essentially created the App
    Store, and what happened is Apple did not go out there and
    build 150,000 applications. What it did is it provided a
    platform that allowed for innovation to happen on top of that.
    Or if you think about YouTube, YouTube did not go out there and
    create every video that you see there. It is the American
    people and people around the world that created that content
    that makes it so valuable.
        In the same way, when you think about government, it is a
    huge shift when you look at it in the context of Open
    Government where we are shifting power actually to the American
    people and not concentrating power in the hands of government
    employees. At the same time, by moving towards this
    architecture where we are building platforms allows third
    parties to start innovating, such as with spending data, and as
    Senator Coburn said, and providing the ability to see a $60
    contract and recognizing that only $6 out of that $60 contract
    is actually going towards doing that work. By shining a light
    on those types of issues, we can rethink public policy; we can
    rethink how we are investing in money. But, more importantly,
    it is making sure that the American people now have as much
    power in terms of knowing how their government works and not
    just sending tax dollars over to the government and hoping that
    they are spent well.
        Senator Carper. OK. Thanks. Others, please.
        Mr. Chopra. It is difficult to follow my colleagues in
    describing this, Mr. Chairman. I would say three things.
        First, the average American would want greater confidence
    that their government is working for them, so a great deal of
    transparency, including spending but even beyond, on the actual
    performance and outcomes more broadly is how we view the
    transparency component.
        The second component is what I would call news you can use.
    My wife and I have two little girls, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-
    old, and we recently installed car safety seats. I am not the
    strongest guy in the world: You stick your knee in, you plug it
    in, and it is all really difficult to install. The National
    Highway Traffic and Safety Administration has a database on the
    ease of installation of car seats of every manufacturer in the
    country.
        Senator Carper. No kidding.
        Mr. Chopra. Yes, we just published that data for the first
    time in machine-readable format in January. So now every
    product has information on their ease of installation of that
    car seat online. News you can use. We have made it available so
    others can use it.
        And then the third one is the notion that somewhere someone
    has an idea on how our collective well-being can be improved.
    And the notion that your idea can be heard by your government
    and, frankly, acted upon it so that it can actually become
    real, Open Government allows us to shrink the concept of time
    from when you have an idea to when it can actually take hold
    and people can see those concepts being put into use to advance
    our collective well-being.
        Senator Carper. OK. Thank you. Mr. Ferriero.
        Mr. Ferriero. Let me answer that from two different
    perspectives.
        One, this is very much a bottom-up initiative. Each of the
    agencies has been encouraged to create an Open Government plan.
    And for my own agency, seeing how this process has unleashed
    talent in the organization in terms of thinking creatively
    about how we do our business, is for me one of the most
    important parts of this whole process.
        From the second perspective, I see a huge potential here to
    use the Open Government Initiative as a way of connecting our
    records management folks with our IT folks, because as I said,
    we cannot have Open Government if we do not have good records.
        Senator Carper. Thank you.
        I want to go back to a point that Senator Coburn and I
    mentioned earlier. About 3 or 4 years ago, several of us teamed
    up, under his leadership, with former Senator Obama, I think
    John McCain, among others, in order to pass something we called
    the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, and
    the original intent of that legislation was to shed a little
    bit of sunlight on the approximately $1 trillion that Federal
    agencies wrote every year in contracts and grants and in loans.
    One provision of the bill required OMB to set up a Website that
    would show where all the money was going.
        Unfortunately, the Government Accountability Office
    recently showed us that the information on the Website was
    inadequate in many instances and that agencies did not take the
    time to make sure that information was up to date. I have also
    heard that this type of situation may be happening on other
    transparency initiatives such as the Website used to track the
    stimulus spending and the Websites used to track overbudget IT
    investments.
        Let me just ask Mr. Kundra, if I could, what is the
    Administration doing to make sure that agencies provide
    accurate and up-to-date information on previous transparency
    initiatives as well as ones that we may be undertaking in the
    future?
        Mr. Kundra. Senator, I share your frustration and Senator
    Coburn's frustration in terms of how the government is moving
    forward and the quality of the data that is in a lot of these
    systems. But if I could just step back for a second, one of the
    challenges across the board as we look at the Federal
    Government is the number of systems that are out there. When
    this Administration came into office, there was a database that
    was set up, essentially USAspending 1.0. From a platform
    perspective, from a technology perspective, it was not scaled
    to be able to handle those trillion-dollars-plus transactions
    across the board.
        Second, if we looked at accountability at the agency level,
    one of the challenges was it was a culture of faceless
    accountability where everybody was responsible----
        Senator Carper. A culture of what?
        Mr. Kundra. Faceless accountability, so there was not a
    single individual accountable for the data. And then on top of
    that, what compounded the issue is that you had the grants
    community and you have the contracting community, and the
    communities themselves had not set the appropriate standards
    across the board so you could identify a grant from one agency
    and compare it to the grant from another agency.
        Part of what we have tried to do in the Obama
    Administration is on his first full day in office, the
    President issued a memorandum on Open Government. Immediately
    following that memorandum, we began scaling from a technology
    perspective the USAspending platform. The other area we
    invested in heavily as we looked at a nationwide system was
    with the Recovery Act. We wanted to make sure that we were not
    wasting taxpayer dollars by building two parallel systems.
        So there is a nationwide effort to collect data at a sub-
    award level and across there, and we wanted to make sure, as we
    were making those investments, that we could leverage those
    investments as part of the USAspending platform. And as part of
    the Open Government Directive, what we have done is we have
    made sure that there is a senior accountable official at
    agencies who is charged to make sure that the data quality is
    accurate, it is comprehensive, and it is timely. At the same
    time, on April 7, OMB is going to be releasing very specific
    guidance to agencies on sub-award data collection. And we are
    also going to be launching shortly a new USAspending.gov
    platform.
        Senator Carper. Say that last sentence again.
        Mr. Kundra. We will be shortly launching a new version of
    USAspending.gov.
        Senator Carper. Do you have any idea when?
        Mr. Kundra. Shortly.
        Senator Carper. Around here that can be quite a while.
        Mr. Kundra. In a matter of a month or so.
        Senator Carper. OK. Good. Well, that is music to our ears.
        I am going to yield to Dr. Coburn, but before I do, let me
    just telegraph my next pitch, and I am going to come back and
    ask each of you to talk about some areas that the
    Administration and the Congress ought to be looking into to
    increase transparency and to try to reduce wasteful spending.
    But for now, Dr. Coburn?

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN

        Senator Coburn. Well, first of all, let me say to all three
    of you I have extreme confidence that you are the right guys
    for the right job. Had you put the same effort into
    USAspending.gov as you put into everything else, we would be a
    lot further down the road right now, wouldn't we?
        Mr. Kundra. Senator, I think we have put tremendous effort
    on USAspending.gov----
        Senator Coburn. I did not say you had not put effort. First
    of all, there is only one of these that is a law, and that is
    the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. It is
    the law. In fact, we are out of compliance on the law. There
    has not been a report from you all, which is required under the
    law. As a matter of fact, this will be the second year that we
    do not have a report. I hope we get that this time. But it is
    the law.
        The others are mandates by the President, and I applaud
    them, but they have held us up from achieving what we were
    trying to achieve. I have no complaints with your capability.
    But the fact is that right now USAspending.gov is not accurate,
    and it lacks the biggest component that is necessary for
    Americans to truly know what is going on with spending, and
    that is sub-awards and subcontracts.
        The whole idea behind sub-awards and subcontracts was for
    everyday citizens could actually see what is going on. So when
    they saw waste, they could report it. They could be a
    whistleblower. Because we do not have sub-award and we do not
    have sub-grantee, they do not have that ability.
        So we do not really have transparency with the Transparency
    and Accountability Act. I am not here to beat you up. I think
    you guys have worked hard. I think you have done a wonderful
    job with everything that you have worked at. But I am still
    wanting to know when the law is going to be followed.
        Mr. Kundra. Senator, that part of our strategy hinges on
    leveraging the investments that have actually already been made
    with the Recovery Board. And the April 7 guidance will speak
    specifically to how we are going to be addressing the sub-award
    issue, whether it is on the grant side or on the contracting
    side.
        Because of the recovery investments, we are going to be
    further along as we have addressed one of the most complicated
    issues, which is how do you build a nationwide system that is
    going to be able to collect sub-award data, and how do you do
    it in a short time span. And we are going to benefit as we look
    forward in terms of leveraging that infrastructure, given the
    momentum that was behind driving transparency related to the
    Recovery Act.
        Senator Coburn. I do not doubt that, but what you just told
    me is you choose to do this rather than follow the law. When is
    it going to be there? What is the answer to that question? When
    is it going to be accurate? When is the sub-award and sub-
    grantee information going to be on there? It is a real simple
    question. And if ``I do not know'' is the answer, ``I do not
    know'' is the answer. We have a law, and the fact is that we
    choose not to follow it. Just like improper payments, we have
    multiple agencies that will not comply with the law because
    they do not think they have to.
        Again, I will compliment each of you. I think you are
    rightly suited for your job. But I tell you what the people of
    Delaware and the people of Oklahoma want. They think if it is a
    law, it ought to get done and it ought to get followed. I have
    been around this place long enough to know that if I do not pin
    people down, it never happens. If April 7 is not going to
    happen, then my hope is the Chairman will have another hearing
    so we can talk about that.
        We are 3\1/2\ years into this, and you may have been dealt
    a mess. I do not know. That is the usual thing that we hear
    from one Administration--it does not matter if it is Republican
    to Democrat or Democrat to Republican. It was not done right.
    But we cannot manage America without that information. You may
    be absolutely right that you have created the infrastructure
    and the base so that we actually will get there in the long run
    better. But part of not complying with the law is explaining to
    us why you are not complying with the law.
        I want to go back--first of all, car seats?
        Mr. Chopra. Yes, sir.
        Senator Coburn. I followed all the rules on them and
    pinched my finger every time. [Laughter.]
        Senator Coburn. I have grandkids, and it is tough.
        Mr. Chopra. It is tough.
        Senator Coburn. But it is designed to be tough so that the
    kid does not go anywhere.
        Mr. Chopra. You are right.
        Senator Coburn. Let me ask you, Mr. Chopra. You said three
    P's: Policy, platform, and public-private partnerships.
        Mr. Chopra. Yes, sir.
        Senator Coburn. Is that being applied to the Transparency
    and Accountability Act?
        Mr. Chopra. Well, I serve in the Office of Science and
    Technology Policy. I do not know to what extent we have been
    actively involved in the OMB implementation of the Act, but we
    are using these principles across a wide range of national
    priorities. I am happy to give you an example of public-private
    partnerships, whatever would be appropriate for you.
        The one that we most recently announced about a month and a
    half ago was in health care, and it focused on an initiative we
    called Text4Baby. Given your background, Senator, to address
    issues surrounding the number of women who lack access to the
    information on appropriate prenatal care to address both pre-
    term birth rates that are too high and infant mortality rates
    that in this country are too high. We understood that many of
    the young women in this country have cell phones that could be
    used as a vehicle to convey this information. We did not have
    any government money to spur this kind of collaboration, but
    what we did have was an opportunity to bring an ``all hands on
    deck'' approach. So the cell carriers, through their industry
    trade association, the Consolidated Treaties and International
    Agreements (CTIA), waived text message fees for 2 years. About
    115 partners--nonprofit, for-profit, a whole mix--built content
    and have distributed content three times a week to women in
    need. So 25,000 women are getting this service. We did not pay
    for, but it is an example----
        Senator Coburn. OK. So that is great, but my question was
    about the Accountability and Transparency Act.
        Mr. Kundra.
        Mr. Kundra. In terms of partnering with the public, one of
    the things we have done as we have looked at these platforms
    with the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) community. For
    example, the Sunlight Foundation launched an independent
    competition and actually created the applications. In my
    testimony, as I talked about FlyOnTime.us, it was a product of
    a competition that the Sunlight Foundation did.
        We have also seen private citizens actually build an
    application. For example, they took their recall data, and they
    built an application that allows you to see on your phone when
    a product has been recalled so you can prevent yourself from
    buying it.
        Senator Coburn. OK. We had two pilot sub-award programs
    that GAO said they were not successful. Are you planning more
    pilots or what is the plan with USAspending.gov?
        Mr. Kundra. So the plan as we move forward is to actually
    leverage the infrastructure that has been deployed, and also to
    go deep in terms of the sub-award data, which is to go to the
    $25,000 limit that has been set to make sure that we can get as
    much of the data out there and roll it up and characterize it
    as possible and make sure that we can also show trends as we
    look at the USAspending.gov.
        Senator Coburn. What is the problem with the sub-award
    data?
        Mr. Kundra. The sub-award data is a pyramid problem. When
    you go down one level, you may deal with 100,000 recipients.
    When you go down the second or the third level, you may start
    dealing with a million, 2 million, 3 million----
        Senator Coburn. Give me an example of a program where we
    have sub-awards that go to 100,000 people.
        Mr. Kundra. So let us say you give out a grant at a State
    level, whether it is at the Department of Transportation or
    whether it is at Health and Human Services, and at a State
    level where you begin to allocate that funding across the board
    and then that is the government recipient.
        Now as you get down to the private sector recipient and
    companies that may start disbursing those funds across the
    board, you end up getting thousands and thousands of----
        Senator Coburn. Yes, but you are not at 100,000 on
    anything.
        Mr. Kundra. Well, I am talking about across----
        Senator Coburn. I know, but let us just take a Department
    of Education grant. There are 50 States, plus Territories, and
    then they may give 100 per State. So you have 5,000. That is a
    small data set. What is OMB's directive to all the agencies
    about sub-awards? Are they told that you have to do this or
    not?
        Mr. Kundra. So we actually issued guidance on sub-award
    data to try to collect that information. The challenge for us,
    as I mentioned before, was also on the technology front, which
    is we did not have a technology platform----
        Senator Coburn. OK. So if you have the technology, then the
    real problem is not going to be technology. The problem is
    going to be compliance.
        Mr. Kundra. Yes.
        Senator Coburn. So what is OMB going to do about
    compliance? Is there any consequence to not following the law
    as far as the Accountability and Transparency Act?
        Mr. Kundra. So what we have already done is we have made
    sure that across the board there is a senior accountable
    official assigned at each of the agencies who is going to be
    accountable for the reporting of that data. And that is what I
    meant when I said there is a faceless accountability in terms
    of everybody was responsible for data quality----
        Senator Coburn. No. I agree. Well, Mr. Chairman, thanks for
    allowing me to go a little bit over on my questioning time. I
    will submit a few other questions to you.
        Anything either of the other of you want to add before I
    finish?
        Mr. Chopra. Well, if I may--I would make two comments.
        One, this Congress did authorize about $37.5 million in
    this year for what we call the Partnership for Program
    Integrity, basically a fund that would allow us to get after
    the issue of federally funded government services that are
    State-administered, locally delivered, and anything in between.
    So my presumption is that a great deal of the architecture and
    the way we can get better data will come out of the grants
    process--to get that money out and to find ways to be more
    efficient. Coming from Virginia's State government, Senator, I
    can tell you our own accounting systems at the State level were
    very difficult, so Federal funds would come in, the State
    systems are often 20 or 30 years old, and their financials
    would only have a few items of information associated with the
    actual dollar figure. Then a separate system altogether would
    administer where the money ultimately went and the ability to
    cross-walk the----
        Senator Coburn. But there is an easy way to fix that. With
    every grant acceptance, a State or an individual signs that
    they will comply, and here is what compliance means. It is
    easy. Then the onus is on them to comply: If you take this
    money, here is what you have to do to comply.
        Let me just share with you a minute until Senator Carper
    comes back. Almost every week, I have a whistleblower that
    contacts my office. Not having sub-grant and sub-award data
    keeps us from eliminating waste in this country. There is $350
    billion a year in waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in the
    Federal Government right now that I can document. How do you
    get it out? The only way to resolve these problems is to have
    the data there so that when you get a whistleblower and you
    have the data, you do not have to present a significant case
    because it is there already.
        If we can ever get the sub-award and sub-contract data--
    and, remember, 98 percent of everybody in this country is doing
    the right thing, but the ones that are costing us are the ones
    like on Medicare fraud and some of these other things, they are
    costing us a ton. When we do not have that data, we cannot
    leverage the information. When we go to try to get the
    information, guess what? Even on the Permanent Subcommittee on
    Investigations, which has subpoena power, unless we subpoena
    it, most of the time we cannot get it, information that should
    already be online.
        So I want you to understand how important this is as a tool
    for us, and looking at what our financial situation is, what
    you guys are doing is more important than anything that I do up
    here every day, what you all are doing because it is going to
    pay far greater rewards and far greater dividends.
        Thank you.
        Senator Carper. Senator Coburn and I are interested, as he
    just reminded us, in trying to ensure that folks are doing what
    they are supposed to be doing. And it is hard for us to police
    every person in government or folks that are not in government
    to ensure they are doing what they need to be doing.
        One of the things that I like to do--and I think he does as
    well--is to try to find ways to incentivize people or agencies,
    people within agencies, to do what they ought to be doing, to
    do the right thing. And one of the things we have focused on
    over the years is trying to ensure that when Federal agencies
    have surplus properties that they do not need, that they sell
    them and get to keep some of the money to help fund their
    programs.
        We are interested in making sure that not only do we have
    agencies stop making improper payments, but actually to
    identify where the money has gone, particularly in----
        Senator Coburn. Would the Senator yield? Just for the
    record, we spend $8 billion on properties we do not want and
    that are empty that the Federal Government owns. Every year.
    There is $8 billion. That will pay for the extender package
    that is coming on to the floor. But yet we are not doing it
    because we do not have all the data.
        Senator Carper. Yes. But one of the things we are
    interested in doing is trying to go out and collect all the
    money that is fraudulantly taken out of Medicare by fraudsters.
    If we allow contract recovery folks to go out and recover the
    money and let them keep a portion of it, then we can
    incentivize them to do a much better job. If we can do the same
    thing with whistleblowers, let them keep some of the money that
    is actually recovered. But the idea is to find ways to
    incentivize--use financial incentives to harness market forces
    and get people to help us do what needs to be done.
        I like to say--and Dr. Coburn has heard me say this once or
    twice--that the role of government is to steer the boat, not
    row the boat, and one of the things that always fascinates me
    is how do we harness market forces to drive good public policy
    outcomes.
        What I want to do is ask you all to take a minute--and I
    will start with Mr. Ferriero and then we will go to the other
    panelists. Are you trying to find ways to use prizes or rewards
    for people to be able to develop a more effective way to use
    agency information? What kind of results are you seeing so far,
    if you will? And is this something that we ought to be thinking
    about expanding in the future? What is your office doing to get
    the word out on these kinds of competitions? Are there ways
    that we can help put a spotlight on these competitions so that
    more people will want to participate?
        Can you all just take a moment and take a shot at that,
    please? Thanks. And, Mr. Ferriero, if you want to respond, you
    are welcome to.
        Mr. Ferriero. Sure. That is part of the Open Government
    plan that is being created now by the Archives, and there is
    the intention of creating within our agency opportunities for
    competition for coming up with new ideas about how we go about
    doing our business. And this is something that is very much why
    I am so excited about the plan, is that it is staff driven, it
    is from the bottom up. And we do not have concrete examples of
    that yet, but it is a definite part of our Open Government
    plan.
        Senator Carper. OK. Thank you. Mr. Chopra.
        Mr. Chopra. Well, Mr. Chairman, that is absolutely a key
    priority for us, and we think that is a terrific tool when
    thoughtfully designed--you cannot just have prizes and
    competition for anything--to achieve pretty dramatic outcomes.
        Senator Carper. How do we do the design there to make sure
    that what we are designing actually is going to be appealing to
    folks whose cooperation we need?
        Mr. Chopra. Well, we have built a community of practice
    that was launched in conjunction with the guidance that was
    released on March 8 so that we could incorporate best practices
    in that model. There are nonprofit and for-profit stakeholders
    who have been experienced in prize design, the most famous
    being the X Prize that is contributing to our community of
    practice. But even beyond, companies like McKinsey, the Joyce
    Foundation, and others have been contributing and publishing on
    best practices and how to achieve the proper design.
        But they run the gamut, so you might have a design to try
    to develop breakthrough new ideas that you had not thought of
    before. DARPA's most recent $40,000 network design challenge
    really allowed us, with a very small amount of money, to think
    about how do these new emerging social networking technologies
    help to advance big challenges. And they had a simple one: Find
    10 balloons that were floated all over the country that all in
    one morning would be up and then brought down by the evening.
    The entire land mass of the United States was in play, and
    through social networking, the winning team built an incentive
    system. Your point about financial incentives? They tiered the
    payment structure to get thousands of people to volunteer to
    look out and invite their friends and neighbors to say, ``Hey,
    where are the balloons?'' In 9 hours, they found all 10
    balloons across the entire land mass.
        Senator Carper. Were they mostly found in Delaware, do you
    think? [Laughter.]
        Mr. Chopra. Actually, I got a map in my head, but I cannot
    think of where it was.
        Mr. Ferriero. But guess where the team was from?
        Mr. Chopra. MIT. A lot of love.
        But I say that because there are prizes that spur new
    thinking, as was this prize. There were prizes that achieved
    outcomes goals where government investment may not be the right
    goal. So we want to help young people learn about healthier
    eating habits. It is one of the First Lady's top priorities in
    her Let's Move! campaign. We do not have a lot of government
    money. Whether we should or we should not--your point about row
    versus steer the boat is a great one. But we found $40,000 in
    modest prize money to spur all this creativity in the gaming
    community and the application development community, to take
    the nutritional information from the Department of Agriculture
    and find a way to help parents make better choices in food
    preparation for their kids and to educate kids on the food
    choices they have.
        There are communities popping up all over the country
    saying, ``Hey, we will sign up and help. We want to be a part
    of this.'' For a very modest investment, you can spur a great
    deal of leverage in behavior.
        I think the point you are making is a good one. How do we
    get this right? The guidance memo that OMB issued acknowledged
    that certain Federal agencies have certain explicit
    authorities. The Department of Defense (DOD), the National
    Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA), and the
    Department of Energy (DOE) are explicitly authorized to run
    certain prize competitions. Others do not have some the same
    authorities, but have some other vehicles that might allow
    prize competitions. So we describe this marble cake framework
    for how one actually conducts prizes and competitions, and we
    are looking at ways to hopefully make that a little bit easier.
    And with your partnership and collaboration, Mr. Chairman, we
    would love to engage further.
        Senator Carper. Great. Thanks. Mr. Kundra, the last word.
        Mr. Kundra. And I think when you think of prizes, they are
    not just limited to monetary prizes. So what we have seen is,
    for example, at OMB we launched the President's Security and
    Freedom Ensured Act (SAVE) Award, which is essentially to find
    game-changing ideas to help save money. And there was a woman
    at Veterans Affairs who came up with the idea of saying, well,
    why is it that every time we discharge a veteran from a
    hospital, we throw away the medicine that may be half empty,
    and recognizing that a lot of the talent and energies in the
    front lines, obviously, of the public sector and harnessing
    those ideas and baking them into how we run the government.
        Second is when we launched the IT Dashboard--and we still
    have issues, frankly, around data quality. But what is
    happening is we are getting the American people who are sending
    us e-mails or are coming in and saying, ``Well, why is it that
    you are spending all this money on this particular project?
    Maybe there is a better way, a third way.'' So, really, helping
    improve actually performance.
        And the third area I would say which is looking at how we
    fundamentally change the way we deliver services to the
    American people such as the application I was talking about,
    where someone could create an application using data from the
    Department of Transportation or, as Aneesh mentioned, car
    safety data or looking at data around consumer protection or
    the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data around foods that
    may have been recalled.
        We are seeing people actually creating all these mobile
    applications that the government would have spent frankly years
    and millions of dollars building. And so we are finding
    mechanisms in terms of using challenges and prizes also to save
    taxpayer dollars as well as find innovative approaches and
    improve performance.
        Senator Carper. All right. It has been a great panel and a
    tough act to follow, but we have some folks sitting behind you
    that are going to give it a shot. We very much appreciate your
    being here, preparing for this and responding to our questions.
    We will have some more questions that we will want to submit
    and ask you to respond to those as promptly as you can.
        Mr. Chopra. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Carper. Maybe at the end of the day we will not
    only provide better transparency but a lot better service for
    less money, and that is a pretty good goal for all of us. Thank
    you very much. Good to see you.
        I would ask the second panel to come to the desk at this
    time, if you would.
        Good afternoon. It is great to see you all. Thank you for
    joining us. There is Steve O'Keeffe going around here with
    crutches, and what is that device on your left foot there? What
    is that? I wore one of those a couple years ago when I broke my
    foot in a race.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I guess I can remove it soon.
        Senator Carper. Eventually I got to stop wearing it.
    Hopefully you will, too.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Thanks.
        Senator Carper. Thanks for joining us. Coming off the
    disabled list (DL), as we like to say in baseball, off the
    disabled list.
        I am going to give a brief introduction to our witnesses
    and then ask each of you to proceed.
        Our first witness is Ellen Miller, co-founder and Executive
    Director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan and
    nonprofit organization dedicated to the openness and
    transparency of government. Ms. Miller is also the founder of
    the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign where
    she focused her attention on the influence that money has in
    politics. She was named one of the 15 people the next President
    should listen to--I do not think I made that list, but I am
    glad that you did--by Wired Magazine. It is quite an honor, and
    we thank you for joining us today.
        Our next witness is Rob Pinkerton, Director of Public
    Sector Solutions for Adobe Systems. Mr. Pinkerton has an
    extensive background in government and technology, serving in
    both the public and the private sector. Notably, he has been an
    emergency medical response technician in Virginia. Whereabouts?
        Mr. Pinkerton. Henrico County, Richmond.
        Senator Carper. All right. A law clerk in the city of
    Baltimore and a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate. Who
    did you work with?
        Mr. Pinkerton. Strom Thurmond.
        Senator Carper. Strom Thurmond. Well, we thank you for your
    service and thank you for his, too.
        Our next witness is Steve O'Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk,
    and I am told that MeriTalk is an online community of
    technology experts that focus on leveraging technology to
    improve the way that agencies operate. I understand that you
    have tasked this community of experts to grade the
    Administration leading up to our hearing and that you will
    report back the results today. We thank you for your help.
        Our last witness also has had some experience before our
    Subcommittee. Mr. Blanton is the Director of the National
    Security Archive at George Washington University. Mr. Blanton
    has been a leading national advocate in reforming the way that
    agencies classify and protect information. I understand that
    you have conducted over more than 40,000 Freedom of Information
    Act requests. That is a lot. Mr. Blanton, we thank you and all
    of our other panelists for being here.
        I am going to recognize Ellen Miller to begin her opening
    statement. Just try to keep your remarks within 5 minutes. If
    you get too far beyond that, I will have to reel you in. But we
    are glad you are here. We look forward to your testimony.
    Everything that is in your printed testimony will be made a
    part of the record, and feel free to summarize as you see fit.
    Ms. Miller, thank you.

        TESTIMONY OF ELLEN MILLER,\1\ CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE
                     DIRECTOR, SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION

        Ms. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
    invitation to be with you today.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Miller appears in the Appendix on
    page 72.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        On a personal note, I want to just mention that 30 years
    ago I was a staffer to this Committee, so I have a particular
    affection for the Committee for which you do your fine work.
        Senator Carper. No kidding. Didn't they have child labor
    laws then? [Laughter.]
        Ms. Miller. They did. The Chairman was Senator Ribicoff at
    the time, and Ranking was Senator Percy. So it was some time
    ago.
        Senator Carper. OK.
        Ms. Miller. I am delighted to be here.
        My name is Ellen Miller, and I am the co-founder and
    Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation. Sunlight is a 4-
    year-old nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to using the power of
    the Internet to catalyze greater government accessibility and
    openness and transparency. We take our inspiration from Justice
    Brandeis' famous adage, ``Sunlight is said to be the best of
    disinfectants.'' We are committed to improving access to
    government information by----
        Senator Carper. Ms. Miller.
        Ms. Miller. Yes?
        Senator Carper. Please forgive me for interrupting. I have
    just been advised by my staff that on the floor of the Senate
    there has been a move to stop all the proceedings and hearings
    that are going on in the Senate, and we are compelled to stop
    at this point in time. I regret it, but there are rules here
    that unless there is a unanimous consent to proceed for a
    hearing--as you may recall, in the Senate we can only go for so
    long, and then we have to stop our hearings. And the whistle
    has blown, unfortunately, and we and all the other committees
    and subcommittees that are holding hearings have to now at this
    time cease. I feel very badly about that. It is not my doing.
    But we are not going to ask you to stay around, but I am going
    to ask you at some point that it is convenient for you and for
    us, we are going to ask you to come back and have an
    opportunity to hear from each of you.
        So with that having been said, maybe after the start of
    recess, we will be able to hold these hearings in a way that we
    would like to. But I am going to have to adjourn at this point
    in time.
        Again, my apologies, Ms. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Pinkerton,
    thank you, Mr. O'Keeffe and Mr. Blanton.\1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The hearing was adjourned before these three witnesses made
    their statements. The prepared statements for Mr. Pinkerton, Mr.
    O'Keeffe, and Mr. Blanton appear in the Appendix on pages 75, 79, and
    85, respectively.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Mr. Blanton. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator Carper. I have had a chance to look through your
    testimonies. You have a lot to offer, and we want to be able to
    have not just those of us who have read your testimony benefit
    from it but a lot of people who have not.
        So that having been said, again, our thanks to you and I
    apologize to you for any inconvenience that this may have
    caused for you, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
    Thank you very much.
        With that, the hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 4:06 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                        REMOVING THE SHROUD OF SECRECY:
                       MAKING GOVERNMENT MORE TRANSPARENT
                            AND ACCOUNTABLE--PART II

                                  ----------

                            TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 2010

                                     U.S. Senate,
            Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management,
                  Government Information, Federal Services,
                                  and International Security,
                          of the Committee on Homeland Security
                                            and Governmental Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in
    room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R.
    Carper, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
        Present: Senator Carper.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

        Senator Carper. Good afternoon. This is a little bit like
    church. In church, you have the pews up front and the pews in
    back. The pews up front are always empty, and if our witnesses
    will turn around, you will see what I mean. The folks are
    sitting in the back pews there. Some of them look kind of
    young. I do not know where you ladies and gentlemen are from.
    Where are you all from? Well, this is like ``American Pie.''
    This is good. [Laughter.]
        We are glad you are here.
        To our witnesses, this group has your back.
        Mr. Blanton. Thank you.
        Senator Carper. Our Subcommittee will come to order, and
    our thanks to our guests and our witnesses for being here
    today. For the next hour or so, we are going to discuss ways
    that President Obama and his team of Open Government experts
    can reshape both old and inefficient bureaucratic agencies into
    lean, not so mean, citizen-focused machines. And we had hoped
    to hear from our panel of witnesses today a couple of weeks
    ago, but there were larger issues at play, and unfortunately we
    had to take a rain check. As I recall, we had to basically stop
    our hearing. There is a procedure, a process in the Senate that
    at the beginning of the legislative day, the Majority Leader or
    his or her deputy will ask unanimous consent for the committees
    to meet beyond a 2-hour limit, and if we do not get that
    unanimous consent, we cannot meet. And the unanimous consent
    was sought, was refused, somebody objected from the other side,
    and as a result, we had to close down all of our committee
    hearings throughout the Senate abruptly. And we apologize again
    for the disruption. We are just glad that our witnesses were
    willing to come back, and nobody objected today so we can all
    be here.
        But before our hearing ended last month, we were able to
    hear from one panel, and that was from the administration's top
    officials who are leading the Open Government Initiative. I
    applauded them then and I will do so again today. The
    Administration released guidance to reduce wasteful agency
    spending to make senior leaders more accountable and to
    improve, we hope, the lives of everyday Americans.
        It should not be a talking point anymore that agencies
    should be as transparent and accountable as possible, and
    change needs to start at the top. When I was the age of these
    old people sitting--actually, these young people sitting out in
    the audience, to say to somebody that they were transparent was
    not a compliment, and it is interesting today that we want our
    agencies, we want those that are serving us, we want our
    legislative process, we want our leaders to be transparent in
    what they are trying to do. So what was not a compliment a few
    years ago is today. We are very much attempting to be
    transparent.
        Now that we have an opportunity to hear from our panel of
    outside experts, I hope to finish the discussion we started a
    couple of weeks ago and learn in what areas the Administration
    is doing well, what areas may need some more attention, and
    more importantly, how making agencies more open and transparent
    will make the lives of 300 million Americans a little bit
    better.
        Just to recap why this hearing is important, every year
    agencies spend nearly $1 trillion--think about that, $1
    trillion--on contracts, grants, and loans. Yet it seems like
    every week or so we receive another report from outside
    watchdogs--actually, they are kind of like inside watchdogs,
    but the Government Accountability Office, which is a Federal
    agency, or from an agency's Inspector General outlining
    significant wasteful and inefficient spending. You expect some
    of that with an operation as big as the Federal Government, but
    there is plenty of waste that still goes around, and the folks
    at GAO and the Inspector Generals help us to identify that. But
    at a time when a lot of Americans are trying to keep from
    losing their jobs or avoid foreclosure on their homes, we in
    the Federal Government, need to lead by example and not by
    exception.
        I like to tell my staff, if it is not perfect, make it
    better, and try to focus on doing everything well. I believe
    that phrase can be applied here. There is more that both the
    Administration and the Congress can do to make sure that we are
    spending Americans' hard-earned tax dollars wisely, and we need
    to work together to get it done. The American people demand it.
        In closing, I just want to add that as we discuss all of
    the new and exciting initiatives that the Administration has
    under way or plans on undertaking in the near future, we ought
    to keep our eye on the ball. Our job does not just end at
    making information freely available, but in making sure that
    information can be effectively used to improve services to
    every American, to reduce wasteful spending, and to enforce
    accountability.
        Again, our thanks to our witnesses of this panel, one of
    whom showed up wounded--he is coming off the DL, the Disabled
    List--to be here with us today, and we are grateful for that.
        My statement says I will now recognize Senator McCain for
    his opening statement, but he has not joined us yet, and he may
    during the time that you all are here, and I hope so. And if he
    can, we will recognize him when he arrives.
        Again, thank you. Your entire statements will be made a
    part of the record, and I will just ask maybe, Mr. Wonderlich.

      TESTIMONY OF JOHN WONDERLICH,\1\ POLICY DIRECTOR, SUNLIGHT
                               FOUNDATION

        Mr. Wonderlich. Chairman Carper, thank you again for the
    opportunity to appear before you today. As you said, my name is
    John Wonderlich, and I am the Policy Director for the Sunlight
    Foundation. The Sunlight Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit
    dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze
    greater government openness and transparency. We take our
    inspiration from Justice Brandeis' famous adage, ``Sunlight is
    said to be the best of disinfectants.''
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wonderlich appears in the
    Appendix on page 89.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        We are committed to improving access to government
    information by making as much of it as possible available
    online. Indeed, we believe it is important to redefine
    ``public,'' as in the phrase ``public information,'' as meaning
    online. We focus on creating databases and new tools and
    Websites to enable citizens to get the information they need to
    be informed participants in our democracy. We believe that
    transparency and openness are essential foundations for public
    trust and that without the former, the latter cannot survive.
        The Internet is making increased transparency cheaper, more
    effective, and in higher demand every day as Americans come to
    expect instantaneous and constant access to all kinds of
    information. Given the rapid technological advances in how
    information can be captured, stored, analyzed, and shared, this
    is the time for government to rethink how it makes information
    available.
        There are three core principles for establishing an open
    and transparent government:
        First, transparency is government's responsibility.
    Transparency must, first and foremost, be understood as the
    responsibility of our government since private and nonprofit
    responses can only reach so far.
        Second, public means online, so whenever the government has
    committed to making information public, the standard for public
    should include freely accessible online. Information cannot be
    described as truly public if it is available only inside a
    government building, during limited hours, or for a fee.
        Third, data quality and presentation matter. The Internet
    has redefined effective communications and publishing, and it
    is now an around-the-clock open medium in which now standard
    practices include continuous dissemination, permanent
    searchability and reusability, and other key features.
        So why are these improvements in government transparency so
    important? First, transparency is the basis for informed
    participation in self-government. The public has rising
    expectations of greatly expanded access to government
    information so that they can play a fuller role in
    understanding, evaluating, and participating in the workings of
    their government. Our role as citizens is only as strong as our
    government is open. This idea is not an abstract, distant kind
    of public good. The actions that make up our civic lives--
    informed voting, active participation or analysis--these all
    depend on access to public information. Without that
    connection, citizens are left disconnected and dispirited, and
    substance and dialogue are replaced by apathy and divisiveness.
        Second, online transparency can create accountable and
    efficient spending, something that governmental bodies and
    cities and States and here in Washington are just now starting
    to discover.
        Third, when government makes data public, it can foster
    whole new businesses or industries. President Obama's Open
    Government Directive recognizes this potential, noting that
    information that make ``create economic opportunity'' should be
    given special priority.
        And, fourth, and perhaps most importantly, open and
    transparent government is accountable government. Open
    information allows us to check what government is doing with
    our tax dollars and for whom.
        Sunlight's vision is one of a rich, vital public sphere
    where politics is driven by dialogue and fact and merit drives
    decisionmaking in government. In that spirit, we are pleased to
    help shape the new policies and technology that will allow us
    all to benefit from a stronger democracy, creating new
    platforms and databases to inform and engage citizens,
    empowering journalists, lawmakers, and public officials,
    investing in our social infrastructure to demand and make
    better use of government information, and advancing the bold
    and responsible policies that will ultimately open our
    government.
        Thank you very much, and I am happy to answer any
    questions.
        Senator Carper. That is your story and you are going to
    stick to it?
        [Nodding affirmatively.]
        Senator Carper. Good enough.
        I failed to introduce Mr. Wonderlich before he began
    speaking, and I will just say just a couple things.
        Is it true that you are the Policy Director at the Sunlight
    Foundation?
        Mr. Wonderlich. Correct.
        Senator Carper. And is it true that the Sunlight Foundation
    is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to openness
    and transparency in government?
        Mr. Wonderlich. Sounds right.
        Senator Carper. All right. Is it true that in this capacity
    you work with the Congress, you work with agencies, and the
    public sector to develop smarter policies that help reform bad
    government practices?
        Mr. Wonderlich. Indeed, yes.
        Senator Carper. And that is why we asked you to be here
    today.
        Mr. Wonderlich. Thank you.
        Senator Carper. Thank you.
        Our next witness is Steve O'Keeffe, founder of--do you call
    it MeriTalk? You founded it, didn't you?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I did.
        Senator Carper. How long ago?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Two years ago.
        Senator Carper. Two years ago. And before that?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I had been working in the public-private
    domain for about 20 years.
        Senator Carper. Where did you learn to speak English?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. That was in London.
        Senator Carper. OK. You speak it better than the rest of
    us, I think.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Well, differently, maybe.
        Senator Carper. I did an interview this morning on Fox
    Business Network, and the guy who was interviewing me was
    British. He kept asking me, ``What are you saying?''
    [Laughter.]
        He was wondering what I was saying. No, we actually had a
    Kumbaya moment. We actually agreed on some things. It was
    pretty amazing for both of us.
        I am told that MeriTalk is an online community of
    technology experts that focus on leveraging technology to
    improve the way that agencies operate. I understand that you
    tasked this community of experts to grade the Administration,
    give them a grade leading up to our hearing, and that you will
    report back the results today. And I just have one question
    before you start: Do you grade on a curve?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. No, it is not graded on a curve.
        Senator Carper. OK. Fair enough. All right. Well, good. You
    are recognized. Please proceed. Thanks again for being here.

        TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN W.T. O'KEEFFE,\1\ FOUNDER, MERITALK

        Mr. O'Keeffe. Chairman Carper and Subcommittee Members,
    thank you for the opportunity to speak to you here today. My
    name is Steve O'Keeffe, and as you mentioned, I am the founder
    of MeriTalk, the government IT network. MeriTalk is an online
    community that fosters public-private collaboration and
    dialogue in the government IT community.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statements of Mr. O'Keeffe appears in the Appendix
    on pages 79 and 93 respectively.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        First, I would like to congratulate you on the innovative
    format for this hearing, breaking it into two parts. Seriously,
    while the separation between government and industry panels was
    unorthodox----
        Senator Carper. I just want you to know, Mr. O'Keeffe--
    forgive me for interrupting, but I just wanted you to know the
    room is just emptying out. [Laughter.]
        Moments after you started to speak, everybody got up and
    began to leave. But we have a new group from Delaware that are
    here to bolster you and they are here to cheer. So go right
    ahead.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. It is probably because they cannot understand
    me. [Laughter.]
        So just to say, apart from everybody leaving, I wanted to
    congratulate you on the unorthodox format for this hearing,
    breaking in into two parts. Here we are in the reloaded
    session. While it was unorthodox, it did provide us the
    opportunity, candidly, to connect with some of the people who
    spoke in the first panel, the government experts, and engaged
    in some very meaningful dialogue. Just last week, I met with
    Vivek Kundra at OMB and with Mike Wood at the Recovery Board.
    We reviewed the results of the MeriTalk Ogov Study, which I am
    going to present in a minute or two here, and exchanged
    perspectives that will help shape the path forward on both
    sides of the equation, both government and industry, real,
    meaningful public-private dialogue. Perhaps this should be the
    format going forward. We should stop every hearing halfway and
    reload it.
        Senator Carper. Did you happen to engage them once the
    hearing had to stop? Is that when you all had a chance to talk?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Yes.
        Senator Carper. How fortunate. That is great. We may want
    to do that more often.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I think it could be the new thing.
        Senator Carper. It could be.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. So I would like to begin by noting that
    President Obama's Open Government Directive is not a stroke-of-
    a-pen initiative. If you will pardon the hyperbole, it is
    analogous to President Kennedy's challenge to go to the Moon in
    1961. Nobody expected to see a spaceship take off one year
    after the announcement, and if they did, I would put it that
    few people would have jumped on board to ride that spaceship
    just one year after the announcement. Many of us have had the
    opportunity to ride on the Open Government Apollo 1, and I
    think we have had some mixed experiences, candidly.
        Just over a year ago, after the signing of the Open
    Government Directive, Open Government is getting mixed reviews.
    In my written testimony, I talk about some of our firsthand
    experience trying to build applications on top of the first
    version of the IT Dashboard from OMB as well as for searching
    for content on Recovery.gov. I guess the net of our experience
    was that it was pretty frustrating. If I might, the juice just
    really was not worth the squeeze once we had gone through the
    process.
        That said, seeing as this is an Open Government hearing, we
    thought it would be appropriate to bring the community's voice
    into this hearing, so that is why we hosted the Ogov Survey on
    MeriTalk prior to the initial hearing to get the community's
    read on how we are doing in Open Government. And with that, let
    me present a couple of slides here.\1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The slides presented by Mr. O'Keeffe appears in the Appendix on
    page 82.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The first is we asked, Do you think the government is more
    open today than it was when President Obama took office? And
    while 53 percent say yes, there is a surprising number of
    people that think that, no, the government is not more open,
    and also a significant number that think that they are not sure
    whether it is more open or not.
        Senator Carper. Interestingly enough, I saw some polling
    data today at a luncheon presentation, and the President's
    favorables and unfavorables or uncertains kind of reflect those
    numbers right there. Isn't that interesting?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Yes, it is. Well, hopefully we can get the
    Open Government--send them an op and hopefully get the
    President's approvals up. That would be great.
        Do you feel that Open Government is providing----
        Senator Carper. I am glad you got that in before Senator
    McCain joined us. [Laughter.]
        Mr. O'Keeffe. There will be more people leaving the room.
        We asked: Do you feel that Open Government is providing you
    with a voice in how government works? And you will see that 58
    percent of the sample say no, which is interesting. So when we
    look at this notion of Open Government as a way for citizens to
    have a say in how their government operates between elections,
    we are not really meeting that requirement right now. I think
    that is an important point.
        These are just a few of the questions that we put. We
    asked: How would you grade OMB's IT Dashboard? And what we see
    is only 4 percent give that Dashboard an A grade. When I sat
    down with Vivek Kundra, he was keenly interested in this
    feedback. You will see that 37 percent give it a C grade and 21
    percent give it a D grade. So there is a lot of room for
    improvement.
        One of the things that I think was very encouraging is a
    very open path in terms of discussion about what the feedback
    is. There is no denial from the executives.
        We asked: What was the biggest challenge to Open
    Government? And the No. 1 point here was management resistance
    to transparency--hardly a huge shock. Obviously, we are trying
    to introduce new ideas, and so I think we need a lot of
    evangelism inside the government and talking about the
    requirement to civil servants about the requirement to do this
    because this is a new way of looking at things.
        Another point here, 16 percent said the absence of a proven
    model and infrastructure for real citizen engagement, so
    looking at all this Web 2.0 stuff where we are looking at how
    to put that together as it evolves provides something that is
    really valuable.
        And then we asked: Should the government execute research
    to identify what citizens like and dislike, what they want and
    need from Open Government? So if the government is building a
    product, which is a new role for the government, it will be a
    great idea first to have some understanding of what citizens
    are looking for in Open Government rather than just building
    what we think, if that makes sense.
        So as I mentioned in my opening comments, I had the
    opportunity to sit down with Vivek Kundra at OMB and with Mike
    Wood at the Recovery Board since our first hearing. Both of
    these executives were keenly interested in the results of the
    MeriTalk Open Government Study and, importantly, open a
    dialogue about how to improve the state of Open Government.
        Vivek Kundra advised that OMB has made significant upgrades
    to its IT Dashboard since we looked at it last year. We talked
    about the opportunity for better communication with the
    community on the site's functionality as very important.
        That said, we took a look back out on the site, and we did
    find that the platform has much improved. I would like to
    present just a couple of slides from that to show the kind of
    data that is available today on the site. The data is there,
    the analysis we provided, and there is significant opportunity
    for public-private partnership going forward in this area. So a
    couple of quick slides.
        This is the first slide looks at what the government's
    information technology and management spend.\1\ This is $40.2
    billion with a ``b'' each year. And so what we see here is that
    64 percent of that spend is going on maintaining legacy
    systems. So keeping up expensive legacy systems, and in many
    circumstances we might perhaps be better off looking at
    modernizing rather than trying to put Band-Aids on the existing
    systems. And this speaks to cloud and many other initiatives
    looking at modernizing government's IT infrastructure.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The slide referenced by Mr. O'Keeffe appears in the Appendix on
    page 83.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        We break out here by DOD and civilian, and what you see on
    the first chart there on the left-hand side is that DOD spends
    significantly less on maintaining the old than the civilian
    agencies, so maybe there is a way to look at accelerating that
    modernization and taking a leaf out of the DOD's book.
        The next and final slide that I will show you is a further
    breakdown of that data, and what this shows is information
    infrastructure maintenance, information management, information
    security spending.\2\ The red is information security spending,
    and you will see that far and away the lion's share of
    information security spending is happening in the Department of
    Defense. There are red portions on each of these civilian
    government's charts, but it is so marginal that you really
    cannot even see it. So sometimes graphing data provides new
    insight, and our intent is to look at taking data that is being
    published by the government and repackaging it in fashions that
    will provide applications and value for the American public.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ The slide referenced by Mr. O'Keeffe appears in the Appendix on
    page 84.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Mr. Wonderlich talked a little bit about this notion of the
    private sector providing additional value-added, and we very
    much support that notion.
        We are currently in dialogue with a series of Federal
    agencies to ground source some of the numbers that we pulled
    from the Dashboard to find out whether they are indeed
    accurate, and so we look forward to continuing that dialogue
    and proving that out.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I await
    your questions.
        Senator Carper. Thank you. I thought your colleague who
    helped with the presentation on the charts just did an
    exceptional job. [Laughter.]
        Do you want to introduce her?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Yes, this is Lauren Walker. She is really the
    brains of the outfit and helps out in all circumstances.
        Senator Carper. I was watching her from time to time during
    your presentation. I could just barely see her lips move when
    you spoke. [Laughter.]
        You guys are pretty good at that. Thank you.
        Our last witness is actually somebody we have seen around
    here before and we welcome him back: Thomas Blanton is the
    Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington
    University. Mr. Blanton has been a leading national advocate in
    reforming the way that agencies classify and protect
    information. We are pretty good at overclassifying, as I
    recall.
        Mr. Blanton. Yes, sir.
        Senator Carper. And as I stated during last month's
    hearing, I understand that you have conducted more than--is it
    40 Freedom of Information requests? Is it 400?

      TESTIMONY OF THOMAS BLANTON,\1\ DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY
                                ARCHIVE

        Mr. Blanton. Forty thousand.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statements of Mr. Blanton appear in the Appendix
    on pages 85 and 97 respectively.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Senator Carper. It is 40,000. That is probably more than
    anybody around--well, maybe not, but that is a lot of 40,000
    Freedom of Information requests. I can hear them say, ``It is
    him again. It is Blanton again with another FOIA request.''
    That is a lot. I do not know if you get paid by the FOIA
    request, but if you did, you would be well off.
        Mr. Blanton. The pharmaceutical industry does about 10
    times as many.
        Senator Carper. OK.
        Mr. Blanton. We are just a small nonprofit media outfit
    trying to keep the government open.
        Senator Carper. OK. Well, we are glad you are here, and
    thanks for joining our panel again today. I want to apologize
    for your having to come back, but we are glad that you are
    willing to. And as Mr. O'Keeffe suggested, maybe some real good
    has come out of the fact that we were disrupted last time and
    had a chance to have a dialogue that otherwise would not have
    occurred.
        Mr. Blanton. I would echo that, Mr. Chairman.
        Last time I actually got to personally congratulate Vivek
    Kundra on the CIO Council winning the Rosemary Award, named
    after Rosemary Woods for her infamous 18\1/2\-minute gap in the
    Watergate tapes. And we gave it to them this year, to the Chief
    Information Officer Council, because although they have been in
    charge of best practices for government's IT, all that spending
    that Mr. O'Keeffe is talking about, since 1996 they have never
    addressed the crisis in electronic records and e-mail
    preservation. And if they cannot on the front end of those
    billions and billions put in the preservation and access piece,
    then none of us are going to have any documents to FOIA request
    for down the road, and we will not know what our own government
    has done.
        So your hearing last time gave me the opportunity to give
    him my own personal congratulations, but that is the least of
    it. I just want to make three points today, Mr. Chairman. One
    of them is just the importance of this process and this hearing
    and this follow-up, because by calling Vivek Kundra, Aneesh
    Chopra, and David Ferriero last time, you actually forced some
    decisions on them. They had to face up and push the agencies to
    come up with tangible deliverables and to be able to come here
    and tell you we are doing something really positive here. You
    have the bully pulpit, and your role, I think, is truly
    essential to the progress that we are already seeing.
        I think that is my second point. I am more optimistic today
    than I would have been on March 23 if you had me on the panel
    right after them. And the reason why is between March 23 and
    today, those agencies have all deposited their Open Government
    plans on the public. And it is a fascinating process to see the
    bureaucracy itself churning. They have been ordered to do so by
    the President, by the Office of Management and Budget, and they
    have actually created interagency processes where some of their
    best and brightest are trying to come up with ways to make
    their process more open to the public. They have systems that
    are trying to identify those high-value data sets they can put
    out there. You see this bureaucratic motion happening, and
    change will come of that.
        But that is really the third point, which is we are not
    there yet. It has not changed. Maybe the wheels over at the
    White House--this is Norm Eisen . He likes this metaphor. He
    says, ``We have turned the wheel all the way over with our
    directives and our orders and our guidance and the memos and
    Day 1 pronouncements by President Obama. But it is a super
    tanker, and so the ship is just barely moving like this.''
        Well, I am here to tell you today is not a super tanker. It
    is actually a fleet. And there are aircraft carriers and there
    are dinghies, and we have actually found a couple of rowboats,
    too. And let me tell you, they have no radio equipment to be in
    touch with the White House, and they do not know what is going
    on, and they have not received the word yet.
        What we released last month was our eighth audit
    governmentwide of how Federal agencies are responding to
    Freedom of Information requests, and we did a real simple
    thing. The President had put out a directive on his Day 1 in
    office for agencies to get more responsive, change your Freedom
    of Information practice. The Attorney General then in March for
    Sunshine Week last year put out specific guidance to all the
    agencies saying: Change your FOIA practice, your regulations,
    and your training materials.
        So we did a simple thing. We filed Freedom of Information
    requests with all 90 major Federal agencies, said: Show us.
    What did you change? Give us a copy of your regs before and
    after. Give us a copy of your training materials. Give us a
    copy of your guidance. Give us a copy of anything that you
    changed in response to the President and the Attorney General.
    And I can tell you today 13 out of 90--only 13 out of 90--
    Federal agencies made any concrete change to their actual FOIA
    practice in that first year.
        Now, why I am more optimistic. That made headlines across
    the country on March 15, and the headlines were, ``Report
    faults Obama's efforts at transparency,'' or ``Agencies lag
    Obama message.'' That was Monday morning.
        Tuesday morning, the White House Chief of Staff and the
    White House Counsel sent a memo to all 90 agency heads saying:
    Remember us? Change your Freedom of Information guidance,
    practice, regs, and show it to us.
        Twenty-four hour responsiveness, and that is, I think, Mr.
    O'Keeffe's experience talking to Mr. Kundra and others in this.
    They are not defensive about it. They want to change it. They
    need us pushing to change it. They need you holding oversight
    hearings to change it. They need agencies to get why it is in
    their interest and the taxpayer's interest to be more open. And
    that combination of pressure can actually make the change. But
    diversity of agency response is the great challenge.
        We are right in the middle today, with
    Openthegovernment.org, Mr. Wonderlich's great outfit as well,
    where we are looking at all those Open Government plans and
    saying what is real, what is Memorex, what is really going to
    be a change, and what is just promises for the future. And it
    is a fascinating diversity because some of them are really
    impressive.
        In my written statement, I describe my colleague Gary Bass
    has highlighted the Department of Health and Human Services and
    saying this is a really impressive Open Government plan. They
    have tangible high-value data sets they are going to have out
    by the end of the year. They have done this on their flagship
    initiatives. This is great.
        Others of those plans just say: Well, something? We are
    going to keep planning to write this plan. We will plan on
    planning, and we will plan some more, and then maybe we will
    plan again and we will give you the plan. And that is great,
    but it is not openness.
        You can see how frustrating it must be if you are sitting
    at the White House and you are trying to turn the ship or
    change agency practice. Our first governmentwide audit was
    whether Attorney General John Ashcroft back in 2002 had changed
    the way Freedom of Information requests were responded to. And,
    again, he sent out this memo saying, we at the Justice
    Department will defend you if you can find any reason to
    withhold information from the public, we will defend you.
        So we asked the agencies: What did you change? Fascinating.
    Four or five agencies actually had written memos from their
    counsel's office to their program people saying this is the end
    of the Freedom of Information Act, you do not have to respond
    to anymore requests. The vast majority of agencies, 30 or 40 of
    them, just sent a copy of the memo out to their field offices,
    but did not actually change their own regs or practice. And
    then there were four agencies that wrote us back, and they
    said: Excuse me. What Ashcroft memo was that? Could you send us
    a copy? We never got that one.
        I can tell you, every agency has gotten the Obama memo and
    the Holder memo, and you can see it in just the responsive
    process on the FOIA requests, and you can see it in the
    responsive process to the White House. But change, it is still
    in the future.
        So let me just end with a suggestion. We are in the middle
    right now of this evaluation of agency Open Government plans,
    which is sort of where the rubber meets the road. My bet is by
    the end of this month or certainly by the first or second week
    of May, Openthegovernment.org is going to publish our rankings,
    ratings, and evaluations. We are all volunteering. We have a
    whole network of people all pitching in, taking this or that
    agency, looking at it against a set of criteria. ProPublica
    just won the Pulitzer Prize yesterday. They are pitching in on
    this, too. A lot of us are doing it.
        I have a recommendation for a hearing that when those
    ratings are done, you not just invite Openthegoverment.org to
    present the evaluations, but you pick the two best agencies and
    the two worst agencies and have their chief information officer
    come in, their chief Freedom of Information officer, maybe
    their deputy head of the department, maybe even the Cabinet
    Secretary, and tell you why are you so good, what is your
    lesson, what is your best practice, and why are you so bad. And
    I tell you, I think you will see direct change coming out of
    that subcommittee hearing.
        I really appreciate your attention to these matters. It
    matters so much, and I look forward to working with you in the
    future. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator Carper. Thanks. Thanks very much for your comments
    and your counsel, and thanks for your advice on----
        Mr. Blanton. For what it is worth.
        Senator Carper. It is going to be a pretty interesting
    hearing. I have a couple questions for individuals, but I have
    a question or two for the full panel. The first question I am
    going to ask is for the entire panel, and I do not care in what
    order you respond, but I would like for everybody to share at
    least one thought on it.
        One of the reasons we ask two panels to testify is to,
    first of all, provide Administration witnesses with an
    opportunity to really set the stage or attempt to set the stage
    about what we are actually working on; and then we invite a
    second panel of outside experts--that would be you--to provide
    us some food for thought, to provide just outside-the-box ideas
    and observations. In essence, your job is to let us know what
    the Administration ought to be thinking about going forward or
    perhaps what they could be doing better. And you have mentioned
    a number of those already here today.
        Can each of you tell me two or maybe three areas where my
    staff or I ought to focus on to help the Administration reduce
    wasteful spending and to improve services to the people we work
    for? Maybe two, maybe three ideas for our staff. What can we do
    to help make sure that the Administration reduces wasteful
    spending and improves services to our citizens?
        Mr. Blanton. All right. You started right in this direction
    at the last hearing, and I was really impressed that both you
    and Senator Coburn pressed Vivek Kundra on, OK, when is the
    subcontracting information going to be up there, and that is a
    great step forward because that is where the competitors are
    going to be able to see what the other folks are up to. That is
    where you are going to level the playing field some on both the
    procurement side but also on the effectiveness side, which is
    what your questioning goes to.
        It is interesting to me--and I still remember the Obama-
    Coburn bill, or was it Coburn-Obama bill? And it seemed like--
    --
        Senator Carper. Or in Delaware it was the Carper-Obama-
    Coburn bill.
        Mr. Blanton. I stand corrected, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Carper. No. Senator Coburn was the lead.
        Mr. Blanton. It seemed to me that there was a meeting of--
    --
        Senator Carper. Barack Obama was just a mere mortal.
        Mr. Blanton. Just a junior Senator then.
        Senator Carper. He was a new guy.
        Mr. Blanton. It seemed to me there were two theories of
    governance that came together in that bill, and one theory from
    Senator Coburn is that the more people see of what the
    government spends, the more they will see the waste, the fraud,
    and the abuse, and they will demand that it stop. And there was
    another theory of that government spending which is that if
    people can actually see--it is that old notion of when people
    only vote for bond issues for a school when you can see what
    the money goes to. If you see what it goes to and you have got
    some built-in accountability so that there is counterpressure
    against waste, people might actually support it. They might
    actually want it. And it seems to me that argument is a
    perpetual argument in the American system. I still remember--I
    think Bill Moyers said the American eagle has two wings, a
    right wing and a left wing. It is a permanent argument, right?
    And that is great because that is a dynamic tension. But the
    commonality is that transparency is the key that will lead to
    those greater services. You can get to that subcontract data. I
    know it is required by law. I think it is supposed to be all up
    by October. Is that correct?
        Senator Carper. I think so.
        Mr. Blanton. Yes. Then I think we are a big step along the
    way. I think if you can also reinforce this whole Open
    Government process, because I really do see a level of new
    energy in the bureaucracy, now that they have deadlines that
    are set, now that they have been tasked by the President and by
    the budget folks, they are producing some ideas. Some of the
    ideas are terrible. Some ideas do not go anywhere. Some of them
    could really be best practices that will directly, I think,
    address what you are trying to achieve.
        Senator Carper. OK. Thank you.
        Mr. Wonderlich. So when the Open Government plans were
    released on the January 7, 2009, my organization looked
    specifically at the component of each agency's Open Government
    plan and how well they fulfilled the requirement to inventory
    existing data, high-value data, and identify future data to be
    available for download. And what we found was, I think, what we
    expected, and that is, very mixed results. Just as Mr. Blanton
    was describing, President Obama's clear political will to open
    up the Executive Branch translates into mixed results when you
    look at real change within the agencies. So through the lens of
    did agencies identify high-value data, the results are clearly
    mixed, and I think we can see some of the limitations of a
    concrete requirement like Mr. Blanton was describing.
        So the first point I would make is to look into the idea of
    data inventories. On top of the current Open Government
    Directive, there are existing statutory requirements for
    agencies to list all the information that they have that has
    been largely ignored for a decade or more. So I think the idea
    of telling the public what is knowable about an agency is a
    very powerful one, and that is why my organization is focused
    on it.
        Now, beyond the idea of the concrete requirement, I think
    one of the untold stories of the Open Government Directive is
    this idea of encouragement and brainstorming and collaboration.
    So in the last few days, the White House released this stretch
    criteria document which is bonus criteria or things that the
    agencies should do to move beyond what the directive requires,
    and I think that is a very unusual and laudable move for the
    White House to say: You know what? Our directive is not
    comprehensive and it does not go far enough. But that is not a
    failure. In fact, we are encouraging agencies to think about
    what should come next. And so I would encourage you and your
    staff to perhaps connect with the idea process that is
    happening across agencies and some of these working groups that
    are not just thinking about what the requirements are now but
    what they should become maybe in a 3-year time frame. I think
    there is a lot of really valuable work being done there.
        Then the third thing is I would encourage--and this is very
    much along the lines of what Senator Coburn was talking about
    at the first part of this hearing, that the problems that
    plague USAspending.gov and, by extension, the Recovery Website
    I think are much deeper and endemic issues than just building a
    Website, so questions of what kind of financial reporting
    systems have to be rebuilt from the ground up in order for the
    FFATA bill to actually come to fruition. I think that is a
    longer-term question that is going to take real effort to
    address and the one that we are looking into finding answers
    for.
        Senator Carper. OK, thanks very much. Mr. O'Keeffe.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I will make a couple points.
        Senator Carper. Do you agree with anything they have said?
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Not at all, no.
        Senator Carper. OK. [Laughter.]
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Yes, of course. Got to keep us awake. But I
    think that the focus is very much on what data the government
    is publishing, and I think one of the things we have to look at
    is what data is America interested in consuming, and so I think
    more research on who is interested in this data and what kind
    of information we should be putting out is very important.
        I spent about a year or so working in the Department of
    Homeland Security in the National Cyber Security Division, and
    at DHS we launched a thing called the National Cyber Alert
    System, and it was a subscription-based service where you could
    log on to find out what problems were happening on the Internet
    and what might affect your computer. There were two different
    systems, two different levels. One of them was a technical
    level. That was for technical people. And then one was a
    regular level for regular people. And so what I would do is I
    would get these messages coming across my desk, and I would
    call my mother-in-law, and I would read them to her and find
    out whether she understood what I was saying. And if she did
    not understand what I was saying, then I would send them back
    to Carnegie Mellon. So after about 2 weeks, Carnegie Mellon got
    very frustrated with my mother-in-law.
        But what we have to do is understand what is the American
    public interested in. Who are the audiences for this Open
    Government content? Let us look at this hearing. Apart from a
    lot of the school group that left earlier, this is not a packed
    house, and so we need to work out what it is that people are
    looking for from Open Government and provide that content.
        The other thing I would say is that it is garbage in,
    garbage out, and so there is a lot of discussion, and Senator
    Coburn was quite forceful in terms of this subcontractor issue
    and reporting subcontractor performance and so on. And the net
    of it is if we do not have a better program management system
    and a more standardized program management system in
    government, then the data we get is going to be less than
    optimal, and the outputs that we can produce are going to be
    less than optimal.
        We need to do the same thing from a program management
    standpoint and also from a procurement standpoint. Wouldn't it
    be great if we had better quality data coming out of the
    agencies, people coding the same information in the same
    fashion. So I would say, that, yes, we need to look at the
    information that is coming out of the agencies, but we have to
    take one step further back and look at how that information is
    being captured, how we are managing projects in government, how
    we are managing and recording the procurement process, and also
    on the other end who is interested in consuming this data and
    what are their opinions. What are the outcomes of these
    efforts, not just the behaviors, which I think are very
    important.
        Senator Carper. All right. Well, thank you very much. I
    thank each of you for your thoughtful responses.
        Some of you have criticized the Open Government movement as
    focusing a little bit too much on inside baseball. Now that we
    are in baseball season, we will use that as an example. For
    example, the previous Administration typically focused their
    efforts on uploading outdated agency reports online that were
    many times difficult to find and oftentimes more difficult to
    understand. And although these reports were better than
    nothing, Americans want transparency in the day-to-day services
    that they depend on like Medicare, veterans' benefits, tax work
    done by the IRS, or maybe getting small business loans.
        How will Open Government help them? And how do we make sure
    that we prioritize our efforts to help citizens? So a two-part
    question.
        Mr. Blanton. The way we have looked at the Freedom of
    Information system is it is a kind of market signaling or
    should be a kind of market signaling to the government to help
    answer Mr. O'Keeffe's question about what are the audiences,
    what do people care about, what do they want to get out of
    their government. And if you look at the largest user groups of
    Freedom of Information, according to agencies' own reporting,
    it is veterans asking about their service records and their
    benefits; it is senior citizens asking about Medicare and
    Social Security and projecting their lifetime. And those are in
    the tens of millions, those information requests.
        And so the one problem is that many of those are personal
    or private. That is first-party information. They are asking
    for it about themselves or about their family. You do not put
    that on the Web, or you probably should not, not if it
    accompanies a Social Security record number, right? And yet
    there are probably ways--and this is what I think I am most
    optimistic about the Open Government plan focus on tools like
    dashboards that make the online experience so much easier to
    navigate so that you can then get to those individual--those
    pieces of information most directly relevant to your own needs,
    your own life. And if the Web can deliver what the promise is
    and that the dashboard kind of toolkit allows for, this single
    click, double click navigation right to the place, then the
    system can be far more responsive, but we have got to clean up
    the Freedom of Information nonresponsiveness of agencies, do
    exactly what Mr. Wonderlich and the Sunlight Foundation are
    trying to do, get more of the high-value data sets on the Web
    so people can go search for themselves, because I cannot
    predict what Mr. O'Keeffe's mother-in-law is going to want to
    know from a given set of files, but it is our obligation----
        Senator Carper. But can Mr. O'Keeffe predict?
        Mr. Blanton. Maybe he cannot even predict, exactly.
        Senator Carper. OK, just checking.
        Mr. Blanton. But if you set up the navigation tool so that
    his mother-in-law can go to the site herself and look around,
    make it as easy as doing an online search in any of the major
    search engines, then you are at a place where you are going to
    get the benefit of the wisdom of crowds.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. It is a full-time job trying to predict what
    my wife wants to do, so I have not spent that much time
    pondering my mother-in-law's requests.
        As far as this notion of how will Open Government help and
    how to prioritize, I would put it that research obviously is
    very important, understanding, what are the priority issues,
    but maybe that is not necessarily the role for government.
    Maybe the role for government is to clean up the data, to
    provide transparency and accountability in order to show the
    faith in our democracy, to improve the quality of our
    bureaucracy and the efficiency of our bureaucracy.
        But by publishing the data in a format which is machine
    readable and intelligible, as Mr. Wonderlich had mentioned,
    there is an opportunity to unleash the private sector to
    develop new applications which will deliver value in multiple
    veins. So we are looking at perhaps almost a cable television
    model of applications that could provide value for different
    segments of the community, and how we work out whether those
    are actually delivering value, well, they will either succeed
    or they will fail. And so if you look at things, for example,
    like health or veterans' health, why shouldn't pharmaceutical
    companies step in and underwrite applications that will be
    written on top of government data which would deliver value to
    the American public.
        So I think that the notion of the government developing
    this complete infrastructure, from source, from cradle to
    grave, if you will, in the Open Government model is not
    necessarily the way to go. I think what we have to look at is
    at what point is the data high quality to begin with? Is it
    served up in a fashion which is easily navigable? Is it
    delivering value inside the government? Looking at the priority
    areas but then potentially providing the opportunity for the
    private sector to step in and deliver value-add on top of that,
    and if they succeed or fail, that is going to be largely a
    product of whether they are delivering value or not.
        Senator Carper. OK. Thanks.
        Mr. Wonderlich, you get the last shot at this question.
        Mr. Wonderlich. Thanks. So I think there is this existing--
    the way things work now, so much of our government's data is
    collected for the benefit of maybe 10 government regulators.
    And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why that has been
    the case for so long.
        For example, the Department of Labor just released as one
    of their flagship initiatives a unified search for different
    accountability data, so certain OSHA violations and mine safety
    health data. And I think that is a great move, but it also
    leaves me wondering why that was never released before. So if
    that data is valuable to collect and should have a behavioral
    impact on the people that they regulate, then shouldn't it have
    been released to the public in the first place? And I think the
    mind-set responsible for not releasing that is one that says we
    know how this data should be used best, and it is our job to
    fix the problem. And I think what is happening now is there are
    whole teams of developers, many of which are organizing through
    our Sunlight labs, who are chomping at the bit to create new
    businesses and new visualizations of how power and how our
    country works and how they can use government data to start to
    tell those stories and hold people accountable.
        So on the question of priorities, I agree we have to have
    priorities about what to open, but I think at the same time we
    should recognize that we do not have all the right answers, and
    we should unleash the private sector and the nonprofit sector
    to help to start to find those answers.
        Senator Carper. I think that response gives us a pretty
    good segue to my next to the last question. Just based on what
    you have heard your colleagues at the panel saying here today,
    some of the discussion, some of the questions, some of the
    responses to those, is there anything else that you would like
    to either amend your original statements, opening statements,
    or maybe reinforce or underline, re-emphasize something that
    you had said in your opening statement? Just be thinking about
    that for us, if you will.
        I think there is a saying I like to remind my staff when we
    are considering what the role of government should be in
    America, and this is not original to me, but I like to say that
    the role of government is to steer the boat, not to row the
    boat. And people say, ``What do you mean by that?'' And I use
    the analogy of health care delivery. In England, for the most
    part, the doctors and nurses and health care folks actually are
    government employees. In this country, that is not the case. We
    have doctors, nurses, and so forth in the Defense Department
    and the VA, but for the most part health care delivery is--it
    is either done through nonprofits or it is done through for-
    profit entities. But the role of the government, as I think, is
    to steer the boat, not row the boat.
        I also like to tell them that public policy should really
    try to leverage market forces. At least one of you referred to
    that here today. And we ought to really seek to incentivize
    people to do what is the right thing.
        In last month's testimonies, Mr. Kundra and Mr. Chopra
    mentioned setting up prizes and awards for people to compete
    for if they developed a more effective way to use agency
    information, and that strikes me as an effective model, an
    interesting model but a potentially quite effective model that
    could lead to some interesting results.
        What type of results are we seeing so far? And is this
    something that Congress ought to think of expanding in the
    future? And, second, are there other ways we can incentivize
    agencies to do the right thing before it leads to a problem?
        Mr. Wonderlich. On the question of prizes and awards, that
    is a topic that my organization has some experience with.
        So we ran something called the Apps for America contest,
    and it has happened twice, and right now we have a Design for
    America contest going on, and this is really an effort for us
    to say there is this powerful new force in the country which is
    that of the developer, whether working for a business or
    perhaps on their own, and trying to say what happens when you
    take those developers and set them free on Data.gov, what kind
    of useful things get created. So things like FlyOnTime.us,
    which is a Web page where you can see for any flight, how often
    is this delayed, if this is an important flight, should I aim
    for a different time.
        Senator Carper. I wonder if we have those for trains.
        Mr. Wonderlich. I do not know if that exists, but if we----
        Senator Carper. I will have to find out. I used to be on
    the Amtrak board, and I ride the train a lot. Amtrak used to
    have an ad campaign that went something like this: ``Maybe your
    next flight should be on a train.'' In Delaware we only have
    non-commercial airports. In Delaware, I like to say all of our
    next flights are on trains.
        I am sorry I interrupted you. Go ahead
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I think they were going to go with maybe your
    next trip should be on a train.
        Senator Carper. There you go.
        Mr. Wonderlich. But from an investment standpoint, we had
    enormous success with spending something, along the lines of
    $30,000 in prize money and getting dozens and dozens of
    applications that you would pay far more than that to have
    developed, and almost everyone involved benefited from the
    notoriety of being involved and getting attention to what it is
    that they were able to create. So we have had some success with
    the prize model. I am not sure how broadly that could apply to
    solving some of government's tougher problems, but I think that
    is an approach that the Obama Administration is committed to
    experimenting with and seeing how far we can take it.
        On a similar level, the phenomenon of the Dashboard, which
    I think we are seeing more and more of, there is the IT
    Dashboard. OIRA now has a Dashboard about pending regulations,
    and the Department of Justice just announced a new FOIA
    Dashboard. I think those are all very useful things to display
    what is knowable about a certain behavior. I think we can
    assume that will have a strong effect on behavior, and it will
    be interesting over the next couple of years to see what the
    limit is of how much behavior can be affected by displaying it.
    But I think that experiment is currently underway.
        Senator Carper. Thank you.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. So I think that the initiatives that are
    taking place are good, and we need to innovate in order to
    change to achieve different outcomes. At the same time, we need
    to realize that we are going to fail in some areas, and this is
    not something that the government is very comfortable with. And
    so one of the outcomes of innovation is failure in certain
    areas, so we need to develop walls around programs, try new
    approaches and recognize they may not succeed. And I know it
    sounds a little strange to say that government needs to embrace
    the idea of failing, but I do think that is important. In order
    to succeed, you have to try again.
        I think that this notion of prizes is a great idea, and I
    think wholeheartedly we support the innovation prizes that Mr.
    Kundra is working on and look forward to working with him on in
    that area. And at the same time, we need to look at both the
    stick and the carrot, so the prizes are a great idea. We also
    need to continue looking at reports that show how agencies are
    doing. And what I would recommend is that rather than just
    looking at measuring behaviors--and I think if you look at
    information security, FISMA is a perfect example of that where
    we measure whether or not you put in all this paperwork. We are
    not really measuring whether or not your agency is actually
    more secure.
        Senator Carper. We do a similar thing in education. When we
    measure performance in a classroom by educators or in a school
    or in a school district, we measure a process. We do not
    measure outcomes.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Right.
        Senator Carper. Although speaking of leveraging resources
    and a race to the top, I am amazed at how effectively the
    Department of Education through Secretary Duncan has taken
    about $4 billion, which is, admittedly, a lot of money, but
    literally to leverage enormous changes in over 40 States in the
    way they deliver education.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. No. I think that is right. One of my
    colleagues has a severely disabled child, and so his wife has
    to go into the schools with Jack in order to take these tests.
    And it is critical that the kids actually take the test in
    order to get through the process. Of course, the kids cannot
    take the test, so the mother has to put the hand on the button
    in order to make sure they check the box, in order to file the
    paperwork, in order to get the funding. And so really what we
    have to do is focus increasingly on what are the outcomes that
    we are looking for and try to measure outcomes rather than
    behaviors.
        Senator Carper. Fred Voltaire is the guy I----
        Mr. Blanton. Oh, Mr. Voltaire. Right, your college
    roommate.
        I was in Bulgaria a few years ago, and they had developed
    prizes for the government ministries who were the best and the
    worst at answering public request information. And the best
    award was called the Golden Key Award, and it was this
    beautiful, huge skeleton key on a trophy pedestal. Beautiful.
    The minister showed up to accept it, very happy. The bad award
    was not--they did not have Rosemary Woods to call on, and so
    for them it was the Rusted Padlock Award, also on a pedestal.
    And let me tell you, no minister showed up to accept it, but
    that was what all the newspaper stories led with, was the
    Rusted Padlock. And I think that is part of the problem with
    the prize approach, which is the news is the negative, when
    actually our challenge is how do you accentuate the positive,
    right?
        And so that is why I would say, when you are looking at
    constructing hearings, have a couple that are subperformers,
    but get a couple of the best practices ones, because the best
    practices ones, the prize winners are the ones that prove that
    the old bureaucratic refrain is resources, we just do not have
    enough resources, is not correct. The real difference between
    the high performers and low performers is not resources. It is
    leadership and will and pressure.
        Senator Carper. Well, we try to put a spotlight on both
    good behavior that we can to incentivize more of and that which
    is not so good.
        The last question was just to say after looking at what
    each of you have been saying in response--just in your opening
    statements but also in response to questions and listening to
    the responses of others to the questions that have been raised,
    is there anything that you want to say or add in closing? It
    can be something new, maybe a new thought. It could be just to
    emphasize or underline already something that has been said by
    you or by someone else. We will start, Mr. O'Keeffe, with you,
    if you do not mind.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. Right in the middle.
        Senator Carper. Yes.
        Mr. O'Keeffe. I would just close with reiterating what I
    talked about earlier, which is, this is really analogous to a
    trip to the moon, and it is going to take some time. So, Vivek
    Kundra was really put to it by Senator Coburn about the
    subcontractor issue, and I think it is a very important issue,
    but I think that we have to be practical about what can be done
    and the time frames associated with it. So if we have program
    management and procurement systems where the data is not
    properly passed and there is not sufficient fidelity, then it
    is going to be impossible to get the data that we require, so
    we need to be realistic about what can be done.
        I do not mean to say that letting people off the hook is
    the way to go, but I think we need to be practical. I think
    that we need to focus on outcomes, so it is not just a matter
    of publishing data. We want to work out what our priorities are
    and what we are looking to get out of this, who our audience
    is. And at the same time, I think that the notion of engaging
    with the private sector--and by doing that we allow the
    government to perhaps insulate it from some of the turbulence
    and ups and downs associated with getting new business models,
    which I think is a great idea.
        And, last, I would say that, I appreciate the hearing. It
    is great to have these issues raised, and we are looking for
    more dialogue with the Administration, with the government on
    how to make this better. The answers are not going to come from
    one source. They are going to come from this crowd sourcing and
    discussion.
        Thank you.
        Senator Carper. Yes, thank you. Mr. Blanton.
        Mr. Blanton. I would like to reiterate something that I
    mentioned to you when you came down from the podium when we
    called off that last hearing. I think I said to you, ``Mr.
    Chairman, that first panel of government witnesses was
    brilliant.'' And it was brilliant for this reason: That the
    money and the power was at one end of the table, Mr. Kundra's
    end of the table, and the legal responsibilities were in many
    ways at the other end of the table with Mr. Ferriero, the
    Archivist of the United States.
        Senator Carper. I remember when you said that.
        Mr. Blanton. And the National Archives is an orphan agency,
    unfortunately, and down at that end is where the money and the
    energy is and where the focus is, and yet our real challenge, I
    think, as citizens, as people who care about Open Government
    and transparent and accountable government, is to turn the
    Archives' role from that orphan agency out in the hinterland
    into being an integral part of the information technology
    development on which we are spending $40, $60, $80 billion a
    year, so that it is a seamless piece, so we are not saying to
    Mr. Ferriero, OK, pick up the mess after we have created all
    these very different legacy systems, all these different forms
    of metadata, all these different kinds of software and
    hardware, you have got to save the historically important stuff
    that is important to individuals and for history, but you are
    not integrated with what Mr. Kundra is doing.
        I think at one of our previous discussions I suggested that
    the concept we should be after for that integration is
    something that you see on personal computers today, an
    automatic, built-in, back-up process at the time that you are
    running your network or at the time you are running your
    ethernet. The Apple Mac has a time capsule function where I
    never have to back up my little computer. It is every day
    listening to my computer when I log on the net looking for a
    new file or an updated file and automatically saving it.
        The role the National Archives should play 5 years, 10
    years, 15 years from now, should be the back-up hard drive for
    the whole Federal Government. But to get from where it is
    today, orphan agency spending only may be $400 million a year
    and then a clean-up after the parade mode is going to be
    permanent failure unless it switches over and becomes that
    back-up hard drive on the net for the whole Federal Government.
    To me that is the great kind of challenge, I think,
    institutionally.
        Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. Mr. Wonderlich, last
    word.
        Mr. Wonderlich. Thank you. So to me, I think we are at a
    really transformative moment for at least two reasons. One is
    because the gap between people's expectations and what the
    government is delivering is at an all-time high. If you look at
    our experience as consumers or shoppers or students, it is very
    different from our experience as citizens. The other reason is
    the way that President Obama raised the issue on the campaign
    trail of transparency and promised very big things about
    changing the way the government works. And that leaves us in a
    situation where the press and the public are very hungry for an
    evaluation, and it would be really simple right now to try to
    assign a pass-fail grade. To me, I think that would be an
    enormous mistake because what is happening is much more
    important and much more complicated than you could evaluate
    with a simple pass or fail.
        So I think the challenge that I see right now is to take
    these transparency issues, which are really some of the things
    that people care most about, like earmarks or the way Federal
    money is spent or the way influence works in Washington or the
    way our decisions are made, and keep the momentum that is
    happening now moving forward in a way that is meaningful but
    also recognizes the complexity of the challenge.
        So as evaluators, I think that is the challenge that we
    have right now.
        Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. Again, I will go back
    to where I started off, and that is just to thank you for
    coming back and finding time in your schedules to be with us
    now a second time and to actually have a chance to share your
    thoughts with us and to respond to our questions and actually
    reflect on what each of you have to offer. We thank you for
    that.
        When my wife asks me this evening, ``How was that hearing
    that you were going to hold today?'' I am going to say it was
    fun, and it also turned out to be, I think, highly informative,
    and we thank you for making it that way and sort of holding our
    attention and giving us some good insights going down the road.
        We discussed a lot of important issues that although to
    most of us, to a lot of people in this country, they seem
    fairly abstract, but they can also lead to real-world impacts.
    For example, one area that we have been focusing our efforts on
    is over-budget IT systems that many times just do not deliver
    what they were supposed to have delivered.
        I was happy to hear last month that, I think, because of
    our efforts, the Veterans Administration terminated, I believe,
    over $50 million in bad investments, and the Department of
    Homeland Security will be finishing a review soon that also may
    lead them to start cutting some of their dead weight. We need
    to expand this kind of accountability to most, if not all
    investments that our agencies undertake.
        I also hear that the Obama Administration is leveraging the
    private sector to come up with new and even exciting ways to
    use massive amounts of government information. This type of
    thinking, I believe, recognized that our government is not the
    only one with good ideas. In fact, many times it is the average
    citizen, or the above average citizen maybe, who knows where
    the problems lie and maybe has some pretty good ideas on how to
    fix them.
        So as we leave here today, I hope we will not stop
    discussing these issues. I think we will not. In fact, I want
    to invite our witnesses, or anyone else for that matter who
    might share our interests in these matters, to submit their
    ideas on ways to improve how our agencies are operating and to
    reduce wasteful spending.
        Now, usually my colleagues who were unable to be here today
    will submit some questions for the record, and if you do
    receive them. You have as much as 2 weeks to submit questions,
    and if you would be so kind as to respond to them promptly, we
    would be grateful for that.
        You all make a good team, and we appreciate very much,
    again, your taking your time to share not just part of your
    afternoon but some really good ideas with all of us. And with
    that having been said, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
        [Whereupon, at 3:42 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

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