[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TRANSPARENCY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY: EVALUATING FEDERAL OPEN-GOVERNMENT
EFFORTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION
POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND
PROCUREMENT REFORM
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 11, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-17
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
JOHN L. MICA, Florida Ranking Minority Member
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JIM JORDAN, Ohio Columbia
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TIM WALBERG, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan JIM COOPER, Tennessee
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
RAUL R. LABRADOR, Idaho DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee PETER WELCH, Vermont
JOE WALSH, Illinois JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida JACKIE SPEIER, California
FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania
Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director
John D. Cuaderes, Deputy Staff Director
Robert Borden, General Counsel
Linda A. Good, Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental
Relations and Procurement Reform
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma, Chairman
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania, Vice GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia,
Chairman Ranking Minority Member
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
TIM WALBERG, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
RAUL R. LABRADOR, Idaho JACKIE SPEIER, California
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 11, 2011................................... 1
Statement of:
Miller, Ellen, co-founder and executive director, Sunlight
Foundation; Danny A. Harris, Chief Information Officer,
Department of Education; Christopher L. Smith, Chief
Information Officer, Department of Agriculture, accompanied
by Jon M. Holladay, Acting Chief Financial Officer, U.S.
Department of Agriculture; and Jerry Brito, senior research
fellow, Mercatus Center at George Mason University......... 15
Brito, Jerry............................................. 43
Harris, Danny A.......................................... 27
Miller, Ellen............................................ 15
Smith, Christopher L..................................... 33
Werfel, Daniel I., Controller, Office of Management and
Budget..................................................... 65
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Brito, Jerry, senior research fellow, Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, prepared statement of............. 46
Connolly, Hon. Gerald E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Virginia, prepared statement of............... 8
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 12
Harris, Danny A., Chief Information Officer, Department of
Education, prepared statement of........................... 30
Lankford, Hon. James, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oklahoma, prepared statement of................... 4
Miller, Ellen, co-founder and executive director, Sunlight
Foundation, prepared statement of.......................... 18
Smith, Christopher L., Chief Information Officer, Department
of Agriculture, prepared statement of...................... 35
Werfel, Daniel I., Controller, Office of Management and
Budget, prepared statement of.............................. 68
TRANSPARENCY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY: EVALUATING FEDERAL OPEN-GOVERNMENT
EFFORTS
----------
FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2011
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy,
Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Lankford
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Lankford, Chaffetz, Walberg,
Labrador, Meehan, Farenthold, Kelly, Connolly, Lynch, and
Murphy.
Also present: Representatives Issa and Cummings.
Staff present: Ali Ahmed, deputy press secretary; Molly
Boyl, parliamentarian; Benjamin Stroud Cole, policy advisor and
investigative analyst; Gwen D. Luzansky, assistant clerk;
Christopher Hixon, deputy chief counsel, oversight; Hudson T.
Hollister, counsel; Ryan Little, manager of floor operations;
Justin Lo Franco, press assistant; Mark D. Mann, senior
professional staff member; Tegan Millspaw, research analyst;
Laura I. Rush, deputy chief clerk; Peter Warren, policy
director; Jill Crissman, minority professional staff member;
Carla Hultberg, minority chief clerk; Adam Miles and Amy
Miller, minority professional staff members; Donald Sherman,
minority counsel; and Cecelia Thomas, minority counsel/deputy
clerk.
Mr. Lankford. The committee will come to order.
This is a hearing on Transparency through Technology,
Evaluating the Federal Open-Government Efforts.
Let me read our mission statement for this committee, so it
will be very clear why we are here. We exist as the Oversight
and Government Reform Committee to secure two fundamental
principles. First, Americans have a right to know that the
money Washington Takes from them is well spent. Second,
Americans deserve an efficient government that works for them.
Our duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to
protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold
government accountable to taxpayers, because taxpayers have the
right to know what they get from their government. We will work
tirelessly and in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver
the facts to the American people and bring genuine reform to
Federal bureaucracy.
This is the mission of the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee.
I will make a quick statement of what I think we are headed
toward today on that. The focus of today's hearing is
Transparency through Technology. The Oversight Committee has a
strong history of promoting advancements in this area. During
the 111th Congress, under the leadership of then-Chairman Towns
and Ranking Member Issa, the committee worked on a bipartisan
basis to pursue technology-driven transparency initiatives. I
look forward to continuing that work and joining the
administration in its efforts to fully implement its Open
Government Directive and other transparency-related
initiatives.
President Obama, while in the Senate, joined Senator Coburn
in shepherding the passage of the Federal Funding,
Accountability and Transparency Act. This act required the
administration to create a single, searchable Web site,
accessible by the public at no cost, that will provide
information on all transactions over $25,000. The result was
USAspending.gov, first launched in December 2007. President
Obama and Senator Coburn deserve great praise for having the
foresight that the Federal Government use available
technologies to meet the public's right to know how their tax
dollars are being spent.
Unfortunately, despite a number of expensive makeovers,
USAspending.gov still fails to achieve the total goal at 3
years after its launch because of some well-known data quality
issues that we will discuss, I am sure, as we go through. Data
from USAspending.gov comes from two sources, one that collects
information from Federal agencies on contract expenditures and
one that collects information from Federal agencies on grants,
loans and other spending. GAO has reported that these two data
sources are riddled with errors, largely due to human error and
a lack of agency oversight over its data submissions.
The administration's Data.gov initiative is similar to
USAspending.gov. It is a commendable area and one that in
principle, I agree with wholeheartedly. The Federal Government
collects and generates an enormous amount of data that is
largely invisible to the American citizen, but was paid for by
the American citizen. This data is also invisible to the
reporter or watchdog group that is trying to hold the
Government accountable, or the entrepreneur who might be able
to take that data and create new products, services or jobs in
ways never contemplated by the Federal bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, the implementation of Data.gov has not
matched its promise. The administration required agencies to
publish at least three high value data sets that had not
previously been published. There was little guidance, however,
as to what constituted a high value data set. As the Sunlight
Foundation's director has said of this, ``The Government has
some pretty interesting ideas about what they regard as high
value data. The Department of the Interior seems to think that
the population count of wild horses and burros is a high value,
but records of safety violations is not. We want to see data
that can be used to hold the Government and entities that
report to it accountable.''
Data about spending. Department missions and personnel are
noticeably absent from Data.gov. If this data was public, it
would save time and expenses as groups request basic reports
and data from their government. This is highlighted by an
article in Politico yesterday detailing how a watchdog group
has been requesting long-term budget projections from OMB that
were available in previous years, but they are now being
withheld.
In addition to data quality and data value, I hope to
discuss with our witnesses today the issue of data standards
and interoperability among Federal data systems. If a taxpayer
wants to look at how much an agency plans to spend on a
particular program, from and how much Congress ultimately
appropriates, and then matches that figure with the information
from USAspending.gov on organizations that receive from the
program, and then compare that with the information on the
impacts of the program from information published on Data.gov,
he or she simply couldn't do it.
These data systems lack the common data standards; they are
not interoperable. Not only do they lack a common data
standard, they sometimes violate even the most basic data
standards in areas like separating the State field from the
address field to allow for easy searches.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and hope
that we can begin a fruitful discussion of what is working,
what isn't, what are the next steps each of us should take to
ensure the Federal Government is utilizing all the technology
available to provide true transparency to the American public.
I do want to take this moment to commend the work done by
OMB for Recovery.gov, Data.gov and USAspending.gov. This is the
first administration to make this kind of data available, and
the first attempt will always have some errors. It is not our
intent today to belittle the efforts of this administration,
only to discover the important lessons learned and to hear the
steps that are being taken to move things forward.
I will now defer to the ranking member for his opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Hon. James Lankford follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7567.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7567.002
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Chairman Lankford. I want to
applaud you for your decision to hold this hearing and for the
tone you have set in your opening statement about the subject
matter and the administration.
Too often oversight focuses only on failures when our role
should be to rectify failures while publicizing and encouraging
the dissemination of best practices. In the case of Federal
transparency and technology, consider where we were four short
years ago. There was no centralized site for citizens to read
about Federal spending, projects in the congressional district,
or summaries of investments for major bills like the Recovery
Act.
Today, citizens can access comprehensive Federal spending
information at USAspending.gov. As a result of House rules
adopted under the previous Congress, all earmarked requests
have also been posted on each Member's Web site for each of the
last 2 years. Finally, thanks to Recovery.gov, all Recovery Act
investments have been readily accessible to anyone with an
internet access.
These reforms have been a collaborative effort. Then-
Senator Obama and Senator Coburn wrote legislation to
consolidate information on Federal spending, the result of
which was USAspending.gov. The House adopted rules to require
public disclosure of earmarks to be posted online. President
Obama undertook an unprecedented effort to make public his
administration's implementation of the Recovery Act as well as
information technology and other investments.
Finally, non-governmental organizations have monitored the
accuracy of those reporting instruments and their efforts have
identified the suggested ways to improve the reliability of the
reported data. As we continue to expand these transparency
initiatives, I believe we should demand that we are receiving
the greatest possible utility for these programs. Resources
dedicated to reporting should lead to greater public
understanding and promote accountability.
As the Government works toward achieving transparency
goals, we need to consider any impact that greater reporting
costs may have on the infrastructure and educational
investments this country needs. During this period of budget
uncertainty, these potential tradeoffs are real considerations
that I hope all of our witnesses today will also address.
Another question is how we report and consider the benefits
of Federal spending programs. It is important for our
constituents to understand what they are getting from a Federal
investment as it is to understand how much money is being
spent. Because not all spending is the same. Not all spending
has the same impact on the quality of life or on the economy.
In addition, as we consider the results of different
expenditures, it is important to treat all Federal expenditures
equally, that is, including those buried in the tax code. Tax
expenditures account for over $1 trillion in foregone revenue
annually. While tax expenditures differ from other spending in
form, in reality these are simply spending and policy programs
administered by the IRS.
Of course, many tax expenditures have a valid purpose, but
as a whole, they do not receive the same scrutiny as direct
expenditures, even though they have the same impact on the
Federal budget. They are not listed on USAspending.gov, and
they are not subject to the accountability mechanisms that
apply to other forms of spending.
The Fiscal Commission recommended that Congress carefully
consider the impact of tax expenditures on the budget. I
believe that this committee should look into those
opportunities to make sure these IRS-administered spending
programs are working for all Americans and not just those
receiving the tax break.
I look forward to working with members of the subcommittee
and with you, Mr. Chairman, to ensure that we are working
toward this comprehensive presentation of Federal expenditures
and their impacts. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Gerald E. Connolly
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7567.003
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
I would like to recognize, as many of you know, this is a
subcommittee of Oversight and Government Reform, we do have the
chairman for the committee as a whole here, and I would like to
recognize Chairman Issa for an opening statement.
Chairman Issa. I thank you, Chairman, and I would also
recognize that the full committee ranking member is here.
This is the most important issue of this committee in the
long run. We are a committee that on a day to day basis
obviously deals with the events, the failures in Government,
and the need for reform, short term. Today, like every other
hearing that is about oversight, transparency and getting it
right, particularly in data reporting, we are dealing with what
is ultimately going to be the fix.
I came from the private sector, where the idea that there
would be data entry errors, and that those data entry errors
would be different than the actual payments, was unheard of. If
someone is typing in something for a report, rather than taking
the actual data as it went out on a purchase order, an invoice,
or some other disbursement, then by definition, you are not
giving people the honest results of what Government did. You
are giving them somebody's interpretation of the honest result.
If they are completely accurate, then all you have wasted
is a huge amount of human capital. If they are inaccurate, then
you have data which is worthless.
Today, I am very proud that I have a panel of four here,
both Government and very responsible people within the watchdog
community, to talk about transparency, to talk about reporting,
and to continue with our process of getting it right in the
future. I regret we have a second panel. We have a second panel
for an inexplicable reason that OMB has told us that they will
not sit with non-government entities, that they have a
longstanding policy.
I have been here only going on 11 years. But it is not that
long a policy. I would hope that in the future, we can have the
responsible people who are in the data use business and the
data transparency business as often as possible, when
appropriate and vetted, with the Government people who are
charged with working to do that.
Today's hearing is not the first, and it won't be the last
in this process. Until every dollar from the time it leaves the
taxpayer's account or for that matter, the dollar deposited
when you want to go into a Federal park, until the last dollar
is spent or disbursed, either used to pay a Federal employee or
disbursed through the system in the private sector, until that
is accounted from womb to tomb, we will not have done our job.
When we get to that point, then the job that we all want
done, which is full accountability with virtually no loss,
theft or waste, will be possible. Today it is not possible.
This hearing is important because the failure to get the data
right is the reason that ultimately we are not getting the
responsible government. And day after day, we are told $100
billion, $200 billion, $300 billion would be saved if we simply
stopped disbursements to people or to entities which do not
deserve them.
So until we get there, this committee will have no more
important issue than the one we are here today. This is a
subcommittee hearing, but you have both of the chairs and
ranking members for the reason that the work you are doing is
the most important work of the Congress.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would also like to recognize the ranking member of the
entire committee as well, Mr. Cummings. Glad that you are here.
We would be open to receive your opening statement.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. To
Chairman Lankford and Ranking Member Connolly, certainly to
Chairman Issa, and all the members and the panel. It is
certainly a pleasure to have all the witnesses here.
I was just listening to all of what has been said. It is
true that you play a very important role. Right now, we are in
a big struggle here in the Congress. Just this morning I had to
explain to some Morgan State University students why it is that
many of them may not be able to go to school next year, because
the Pell grants are being slashed.
It is painful, because many of those students will never
return to school. They will never go back. I sit on the board
of that school and have been there for the last 12 years. And
we were losing students even with the Pell grants as they are.
But when they get slashed, it gets worse.
Then I thought about, as I was just sitting here, I thought
about a town hall meeting I had on Saturday, where people came
up to me and said, we have 250 kids in Head Start. But we have
750 on the waiting list.
And so what does that have to do with all of this? It is
about accountability.
I agree with Chairman Issa that we need to account for
every single dime. If money is not being accounted for, there
is a major problem. And that is a sad situation, particularly
in a country where we can send folks to the moon, but we can't
keep up with where the money is going. That is a major problem.
So I am grateful for this opportunity to examine the
administration's ongoing efforts to bring increased
transparency to the Federal Government. I want to thank
Chairman Lankford for giving this President some credit for
something for a change. This is an issue of critical
importance, and the Federal Government must be held strictly
accountable for its expenditures of taxpayers' hard-earned
dollars.
On April 15th, there will be people figuring out, trying to
figure out how they are going to pay the taxes. There are folks
who, at the end of a week or 2-week period, look at their pay
stubs and scratch their heads. They are barely making it now,
if they have a paycheck. So we owe it to them to get it right.
The passage of the Federal Funding, Accountability and
Transparency Act of 2006 and the establishment of
USAspending.gov, as required by the act, have given the average
American unprecedented ability to track Federal contracts and
grants. This transparency increases the public's ability to
hold elected representatives and Federal Government accountable
for distribution in the use of Federal funds.
Further, the act and the Government's experience with
USAspending.gov paved the way for creation of additional Web
sites that allow the public to track specific types of
spending, including Recovery.gov and Data.gov.
The administration's ongoing efforts to improve the quality
and breadth of data being reported are to be commended. In
particular, I am pleased that in October 2010, the
administration began publishing sub-awards on USAspending.gov
for the first time. However, the Sunlight Foundation's
September 2010 report shows that there is an opportunity to
continue improving transparency and make additional information
publicly available. In other words, we could always do better.
During the last Congress, I supported legislation that
moved through this committee to enhance the usability and
interoperability of Federal financial data. I look forward to
working together in a bipartisan manner to advance such
legislation in the Congress.
OMB must also work to ensure that USAspending.gov
implements mechanisms to improve the timeliness and accuracy of
its reporting to the public. However, we should also be mindful
that pursuit of perfection in the reporting of spending data
imposes real financial costs, both in dollars and manpower. And
such costs must be weighed against the benefits they will
yield.
I look forward to the witnesses' views on the issues today.
And finally, let me say this. Any accounting of costs of
Government spending is inherently incomplete unless it also
includes data detailing the revenue loss to the Government
through tax breaks and incentives to the wealthiest individuals
and businesses, including businesses that move jobs overseas,
as children will be thrown out of Head Start, or never get a
head start, and as young people are thrown out of colleges.
I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses and to
working with Chairman Lankford, and certainly Chairman Issa and
Ranking Member Connolly, to identify and address areas where
the Federal transparency efforts can continue to be improved.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7567.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7567.005
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
All the Members will have 7 days to submit opening
statements and other materials for the record.
I would like to now welcome and introduce the members of
the panel. Then I will lay some basic ground rules and we will
receive your testimony from there.
Ms. Ellen Miller is the Co-Founder and Executive Director
of the Sunlight Foundation. She is the founder of two other
prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money
and politics, the Center for Responsive Politics and Public
Campaign, and a nationally recognized expert on transparency
and the influence of money in politics. Thank you for being
here.
Mr. Chris Smith is the Chief Information Officer for the
Department of Education. Mr. Smith previously served as the
Chief Information Officer for Rural Development and the U.S.
Department of Education and as the Information Technology
Director for Financial Information at the General Services
Administration. Thank you.
Switching people back there, Mr. Harris is the Chief
Information for the Department of Agriculture--did I get those
two reversed? I did, actually. I got those two reversed. I
apologize for that. So take all the Education stuff and apply
it to Mr. Harris, and let me switch to Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith is the Chief Information Officer for the
Department of Agriculture. Mr. Smith previously served as the
Deputy Chief Financial Officer for the Department. I understand
that Mr. Jon Holladay, the CFO for the Department of
Agriculture, will also be advising Mr. Smith. So when everyone
stands to be sworn in, if you would also stand and be sworn in
as well.
Mr. Jerry Brito is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus
Center at George Mason University. He is the author of several
published scholarly articles, and a contributor to the
Technology Liberation Front, a leading tech policy blog. He is
also the creator of Unclutter, a popular blog about personal
organization and simple living that is read by a quarter
million people each month. That is a nice reading list.
Let me give you the ground rules for our hearing itself
here. Each of you has been asked to submit a written statement
for the record. We have also asked you to prepare an oral
statement no longer than 5 minutes. We will allow time for
questioning on your statement after that.
You will see on your desk a series of lights and a clock
which will count down from 5 minutes. The lights will change
from green to yellow to red when your time is expired, and it
will be time at that point to quickly wrap up.
After all the panel has given their oral statements, each
Member present will have 5 minute to ask questions of the
panel. Many Members may have several questions, so it is very
important that you answer your questions very concisely. Do not
feel you have to give a lengthy answer on anything.
Please also forgive the members of this committee as we
excuse ourselves. Most of us have multiple committee
assignments going on this morning. We are juggling concurrent
meetings. Mr. Connolly had to slip out and head to the floor of
the House as we have things going on there right now. Your
testimony will be recorded and it will be available for review
by all of us. I can assure you, it is written down, every bit
of it, and we will be able to review it in days to come. So
thank you.
Each Member completely chooses the content of their 5
minutes of questioning. I would ask the Members to honor our
guests' time and attendance by prioritizing answers and
information from them, instead of making speeches. I would also
ask all of our Members not to ask a question past their 5-
minute time. Once it is expired, as the chairman, I reserve the
right to remind everyone that time is expired and ask for
proper decorum in our hearings.
We will have two panels this morning. The first will
include Ms. Miller, Mr. Smith, Mr. Harris and Mr. Brito. The
second one will have only Mr. Werfel. It is my understanding
that the Office of Management and Budget did not want to sit on
a panel with non-government witnesses, so we have honored their
request for Mr. Werfel to be separated from the other
witnesses. We will hear the testimony of the first panel, and
when we conclude that testimony and our questions, we will
immediately move to questions and testimony from Mr. Werfel
individually.
We are very grateful for all the time you have committed in
preparing your written and your oral statements, and the time
you have been away from your family for this hearing. Do you
understand all the ground rules of this hearing?
[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.]
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
It is the policy of the committee that all witnesses be
sworn in before they testify. For all of you that are going to
be doing any testimony, would you please rise. Please raise
your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Lankford. Thank you. Please be seated.
I would like to recognize Ms. Miller for 5 minutes. Thank
you.
STATEMENTS OF ELLEN MILLER, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION; DANNY A. HARRIS, CHIEF INFORMATION
OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; CHRISTOPHER L. SMITH, CHIEF
INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, ACCOMPANIED BY
JON M. HOLLADAY, ACTING CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; AND JERRY BRITO, SENIOR RESEARCH
FELLOW, MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
STATEMENT OF ELLEN MILLER
Ms. Miller. Thank you, Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member
Connolly, and Mr. Cummings and members of the committee. Thank
you for the invitation to appear before you today.
My name is Ellen Miller, and I am co-founder and executive
director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit
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.''
The public has a right to know how its government works.
Recent Congresses deserve congratulations for taking concrete
steps toward embracing a 21st century vision of transparency.
Initiatives from this administration, like the Open Government
directive, are emblematic of the willingness to take
transparency seriously.
Unfortunately, the Open Government directive's value has
proven to be largely aspirational. While establishing positive
transparency norms is hugely important, we believe that
government must now focus on the harder challenges. It is no
longer enough to acknowledge transparency's importance;
transparency initiatives must be accurate, complete and useful
as well as timely.
There is perhaps no better example of the tension between
show and tell than USAspending.gov. Disclosure of the ways in
which the public's money is spent is among the most important
types of government transparency. Congress recognized this in
2006, with the passage of the Federal Funding, Accountability
and Transparency Act, which required that information about
Federal grants, contracts, loans and insurance be placed online
in a searchable Web site known as USAspending.gov.
In the course of their work, Sunlight researchers have
become deeply familiar with the data powering USAspending.gov.
As we began to examine these systems, we were aware that the
quality of the data sets was widely considered problematic. Our
work quickly confirmed that data suffered from irregularities.
However, we were anxious to reach an even more complete
understanding of the problem, so we dug in.
In order to do so, we needed a reference point against
which we could compare the USAspending.gov data. Unfortunately,
the complexities of the Federal budget make both the budget and
Treasury expenditure data unsuitable for that use. We found our
yardstick in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, an
index of many Federal programs, including program descriptions
and yearly obligation amounts. Although not strictly designed
for this use, CFDA has been used for comparative analysis by
GAO in the past.
We took their methodology and expanded it. Like GAO, we
looked for mismatches in amounts between CFDA and
USAspending.gov data, allowing a generous margin of error to
account for differences in the systems. We also looked for
instances in which reports had been made within statutory
deadlines, and for incomplete reports. Finally, we automated
GAO's sample-based methodology, so that we could examine the
entire data base which consists of hundreds of thousands of
records.
The results were sobering. We found over $1.2 trillion of
mis-reported spending in 2009 alone. Some of the most serious
problems appeared to be caused by the agency's failure to meet
their reporting obligations. The USDA Web site lists the cost
of their school breakfast program and lunch programs at $12.7
billion. But only $250,000 of these costs are reported on
USAspending.gov.
The Maritime Administration has never reported spending
associated with any of its loan or insurance programs and
reports only a fraction of its grant activity. These are just
two examples. Almost every agency has one or more programs that
failed to report their spending.
And the spending that is reported is often incomplete or
incorrect. For example, each loan record is required to include
both a subsidy cost and the face value of the loan.
Unfortunately, the subsidy cost is incorrectly reported as zero
for over 85 percent of the loan records. And the face value of
all fiscal year 2010 student loans was reported as $6.9
trillion, an amount greater than the entire Federal budget.
Clearly, that number is wrong.
We do not believe that these problems are the fault of the
USAspending.gov Web site or the people that maintain it.
Indeed, USAspending.gov deserves praise for its growth and
improvement. When we conducted this analysis, we had to send a
hard drive out to Maryland to get the data. Today, we can
download it directly from the Web site.
Similarly, we are pleased to see the administration finally
begin to offer the sub-award data maintained by FFATA. But
these improvements will be meaningless for the vast majority of
users if the underlying data is not reliable. Agencies
typically use purpose-built internal systems for managing their
spending that are separate from the public reporting systems
and much more accurate. In essence, they maintain two sets of
books, one of which is habitually neglected.
But this latter system is vitally important for both the
public and Government planning efforts. And until the agencies
begin to take these responsibilities more seriously, Federal
spending transparency will remain an unfulfilled promise.
We welcome the committee's attention to this issue and
encourage you to continue to spend time in engaging oversight
and legislative efforts on this important topic. Thank you for
the opportunity to testify today. My colleagues and I, Tom Lee
and Kaitlin Lee, look forward to your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Miller follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
Dr. Harris, I am going to appropriately recognize you at
this point. Thank you for being here. We will receive your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF DANNY A. HARRIS
Mr. Harris. Thank you, and good morning, Chairman Lankford
and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the
subcommittee today. My name is Danny Harris and I am the Chief
Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Education, a
position I have had the privilege to hold since October 2008. I
am very pleased to discuss the Department's transparency
efforts specific to the Open Government initiative.
On his first day in office, the President sent a memo
directing all Federal agencies to create unprecedented levels
of openness in Government. The Department of Education has
taken this directive very seriously. Our Open Government plan
makes our efforts more transparent, participatory and
collaborative. I am personally committed to these goals, and
the Department looks forward to building upon the solid
foundation put in place during the first 2 years of this
initiative.
For decades, the Department has collected, analyzed and
used data to inform our delivery of services. At the Department
of Education, we collect data about the overall condition and
effectiveness of education provided by the States, local
educational agencies and institutions of higher education. A
key part of our mission is to provide useful information to
States, assisting their efforts to allocate resources to
education citizens in the most effective and efficient way.
Equally important to our mission is supporting the use of
Federal resources toward ensuring fair access to education for
all. Open Government efforts place special emphasis on
providing information to the public leading to increased
transparency and to the information we and States use for
decisionmaking.
At the Department of Education, we have established a
cross-functional team to develop our Open Government plan,
which is available on our Web site. Also, we have established a
governing body to oversee departmental execution of the Open
Government plan and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of all of the information collection and dissemination
activities at the Department.
Decisions and recommendations from this board will and do
affect IT spending. This coordinated effort will effectively
manage duplicative data requests, it will reduce burdens to the
States and local agencies, and it will optimize Department-wide
data aggregation. At the end of the day, it is not just about
the data that we deliver, it is about delivering tools to drive
innovation.
Prior to implementing Open Government efforts, we provided
similar information and tool sets, allowing citizens to view
the information in ways that we thought were useful. Open
Government altered this framework, and now we deliver the same
information in a raw, machine-readable format, allowing
citizens to analyze the data and transform those data into
useful, aggregated information. This access to data has
undoubtedly created new insights and views, enabling previously
unthought of ways for citizens to understand, view and track
Federal dollars.
The clear benefit is that citizens can now view the
delivery of services with comprehensive information and the
public's ability to access and analyze these data make Federal
spending transparent. In turn, this helps ensure departments
are accountable for results and outcomes.
The challenge for the Department is to ensure the quality
of this data. We view key attributes of quality as timeliness,
accuracy and most of all, privacy. The challenge for our
stakeholders is to establish proper awareness and context for
these data. We have already seen positive outcomes as a result
of these initiatives. For example, in our Race to the Top
program, we provided a detailed description of the process used
to review and select the winners of that program. The
Department, in implementing Race to the Top, has demonstrated
unprecedented transparency by posting all of the applications
as well as peer reviewer scores and comments to the public for
review.
To help spur innovation, our Investing in Innovation team
created an open innovation portal, a Web site where education
innovators can share ideas and collaboration, where funders and
educators can point out their needs, and where people can
gather to propose, develop, fund, implement and more than
anything else, improve solutions inside and outside of the
classroom.
We take the commitment to transparency seriously at all
levels within the Department. For example, in 2009, Secretary
Duncan launched his Listening and Learning Tour. He did this to
engage the public directly in discussing education reform in
America. The Department used the input we received to prepare a
blueprint for reauthoring the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
Transparency through technology provides an opportunity to
engage with the public in making the Department of Education
more accountable. Specifically, the Department has a
significant role in complying with the Federal Funding and
Accountability Transparency Act, due to the very large number
of grants, contracts and loans that we administer. These funds
go to numerous recipients and sub-recipients in States and
territories, and the public should know where these funds are
going, for what purpose, and most importantly, what results
they should expect. We submit grant and loan funding
transactions on a bi-weekly basis from our grant system in the
Federal assistance award data system file layout.
Additionally, we provide our contract funding transactions
to the Federal procurement data system in real time during our
contract award. Both our grants and contract systems are
integrated with the Department's general ledger. This ensures
that the transactions that we submit to USAspending.gov are
directly traceable to our financial systems.
Finally, the Privacy Act and Federal guidelines govern how
we protect personally identifiable information while at the
same time complying with the Transparency Act and other public
reporting requirements.
In conclusion, I believe that Open Government,
USAspending.gov, Federal reporting and other recovery Web sites
all work together to put more and better information in the
hands of the public. The benefits are tremendous, because these
efforts lead to increased accountability, transparency, and
more than anything else, recognizable links between spending
and results.
Thank you, chairman and members of the subcommittee, for
your attention to this important issue. I would be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Harris follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you, Dr. Harris.
Mr. Smith.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER L. SMITH
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member
Connolly, members of the subcommittee, Chairman Issa, who was
with us here earlier. Thank you for this opportunity to share
with you our progress on the implementation of the Open
Government initiatives, transparency and accountability in the
use of information technology to further these important goals.
I am joined today by my colleague, Jon Holladay, who is the
USDA Acting Chief Financial Officer, just behind me.
USDA programs touch every American and many others around
the world every day. We are focused on the activities that
ensure an economically thriving rural America, that we are
conserving our national forests and private working lands, and
promoting sustainable agricultural production and biotechnology
exports to ensure and increase food security and to provide
access to a nutritious diet for all Americans.
Full and easy access to information on Government spending
promotes accountability by allowing detailed tracking and
analysis of deployment of these resources. Tracking and
analysis allows the public and public officials to gauge the
effectiveness of expenditures and to monitor spending patterns
to achieve the best possible results. Transparency also gives
the public confidence that we are properly managing its funds.
From the Transparency Act of 2006 to the Open Gov directive
of 2009, Government transparency has become the cornerstone for
information access to facilitate participation and
collaboration across Federal, State and local governments and
with the public. USDA is a strong advocate of Government
transparency and is striving to meet both the letter and intent
of the Open Government Directive.
On December 8, 2009, the White House issued the Open
Government directive, requiring Federal agencies to take
specific action to promote transparency, collaboration and
participation. The Open Government directive puts
accountability and accessibility at the center of how Federal
Government operates. It instructs agencies to share information
with the public through online, open and accessible, and as my
colleague has stated, machine readable formats.
USDA fully supports the administration's directive for open
government and is actively engaged on this front in making the
Department more accessible and accountable to our citizens. To
foster accessibility, USDA launched its OpenGov Web site in
spring of 2010 and published an open government plan describing
how USDA would improve transparency and integrate public
participation and collaboration into its activities.
With the launch of our Web site, citizens are able to learn
about and comment on USDA information and post their ideas on
transparency and collaboration, and actively participate with
the Department. The public can also post ideas to help USDA
become more efficient and more effective in everything that we
do.
Additionally, to improve outreach initiatives, USDA has
established an open government communication plan, which
describes USDA's interaction and collaboration and details the
activities that we are taking.
USDA is leveraging information technology to improve
transparency and increase citizen interaction and
participation. Two good examples are USDA's My Pyramid and Apps
for Healthy Kids, which are innovative approaches to USDA
reaching out and encouraging collaboration with the private
sector and the public.
The Applications for Healthy Kids competition was a
collaborative project to challenge the general public to design
online mobile gaming tools and educational applications to
educate people about the importance of healthy eating and
physical activity. USDA's Food and Nutrition Service,
Department of Health and Human Services, First Lady Michelle
Obama's Let's Move initiative and the NFL's Fuel Up To Play 60
played a vital role in this challenge. Over 45,000 participants
submitted 95 games and applications, with 12 submissions
selected as the ultimate winners.
Additionally, as a part of the USDA Open Government
flagship initiatives, the Forest Service directly improved
transparency, collaboration and participation by increasing
public participation in the development of its land management
planning rule by leveraging information technology to improve
collaboration and interaction. Using Web 2.0 technologies and
online collaborative environments, the agency provided the
public with updates on the planning rule process and enabled
them to submit comments.
The agency also held public meetings and listening sessions
all over the country to gain input from these citizens. More
than 700 individuals were not able to attend these in person.
Using collaborative technologies, they were able to participate
remotely.
The development of this proposed rule involved more than
26,000 comments on the notice of intent and more than 40 public
meetings with over 3,000 participants, including the National
Science Forum, tribal consultation and Forest Service employees
submitting comments. This increased focus on accountability and
transparency built upon our commitment to strong financial
stewardship as evidenced by USDA compliance with the
Transparency Act.
In September 2006, the Transparency Act was enacted. As
required by the act, the Office of Management and Budget
established the USAspending.gov Web site to provide
transparency of Federal spending by disclosing entities
receiving the funds. USDA sends bi-weekly transmissions to the
Federal Financial Assistance system, reporting any award over
$25,000. We report the key data elements regarding Federal
award within 30 days after that award. And USDA data being
reported to the public includes grants, cooperative agreements,
direct and guaranteed loans, direct payments, insurance and
contracts.
USDA has a comprehensive information technology
modernization strategy that encompasses the improvement of this
data collection and the sharing of that with our citizens. I
look forward to your questions and discussion, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you. You could not have been closer on
time as well. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Brito, pleased to get your oral testimony in 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JERRY BRITO
Mr. Brito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee.
Thank you for inviting me to testify on transparency
through technology.
As someone who believes that Internet-enabled transparency
can lead to better and more accountable government, I am
gratified by Government's efforts in this base for the past 5
years. Transparency is an issue that has been genuinely
embraced by both sides of the political aisle. What was once an
esoteric concept, that meaningful transparency requires
disclosures to be online and open, searchable in machine
readable format has become a generally accepted ideal. Those
are great strides.
However, despite the Obama administration's technological
efforts and congressional legislation like the Federal Funding
Accountability and Transparency Act, whether government is
performing effectively is still not completely transparent.
That is because the vast majority of newly available data is
not about government, and disclosures that are about government
tend to report its activities, not data on program outcomes.
When program outcomes are reported, they tend to be suspect
because they are self-measured and self-reported by program
managers.
On Data.gov, the government has compiled wonderful, never
before available data sets about regulated industries but
little about its own performance. Excluding the 305,000
datasets that pertain to geodata, the Data.gov data catalog
makes available just over 3,000 ``raw'' datasets. Of these,
about half are related to the Toxic Release Inventory compiled
by the EPA. These are disclosures about regulated entities
that, while very valuable to individuals and researchers, tell
us little about the performance of government.
A quick scan of the remaining 1,500 datasets reveals that
only 200 to 300 report on the activities or performance of
government. There is plenty of smoke, but little fire.
One of the better datasets available is Research.gov. This
National Science Foundation data base of federally funded
science and engineering research allows users to search for
grants by keyword, location, or grantee; see which grants were
awarded and for how much; and learn about the results of each
specific, federally funded research project. This information
is useful in holding Government accountable for its
performance.
Less useful, although no doubt valuable to some
researchers, are datasets like one from the U.S. Geological
Survey on the effects of fire on Rocky Mountain Olive-Side Fly
Catcher Bird nests. Spending-transparency sites like
USAspending.org and the Recovery.gov site are also useful
because they disclose government's actions. They allow
citizens, watchdogs, bloggers and reporters access to the raw
data of the business of government. It allows them to make
creative uses of the data, including making interesting mashups
and allowing them to crowd-source accountability.
However, these types of sites are not perfect. As the
Sunlight Foundation and others have pointed out, the quality of
the data available can be sorely lacking. Also, until recently,
only information about the primary recipient of a contract or
grant award was available on USASpending.org, thus limiting the
usefulness of the site.
More broadly, while spending sites can help uncover
instances of fraud, waste, and abuse, which is very important,
they are less helpful in measuring performance because they
simply disclose outputs, amounts of money disbursed to
recipients and simple descriptions of contracts or grants. To
determine whether a program is performing as intended the
public needs information not only about outputs, but also about
outcomes.
With a Federal spending crisis on our hands, Congress must
soon decide which programs to cut and which to keep. Voters
will have to decide if they support Congress' choices. The
whole process would be much easier if information existed about
the relative performance of Government programs.
In the private sector, a corporation must disclose its
earnings as well as its expenditures and assets on a quarterly
basis. Such an objective measure of performance not only allows
the market to set a stock price, but it also allows
shareholders to hold management accountable.
Now, think of Government transparency. All agencies and
programs disclose their expenditures in an annual budget and
through sites like USAspending.gov. What Government does not
report are earnings figures, for the simple reason that there
are none. Therefore, a Government program may be transparent,
and yet the public sees only half of the balance sheet.
Congress tried to solve this problem with the Government
Performance and Results Act. The problem with GPRA performance
reporting, however, is that the very managers of the programs
are charged with developing performance measures, measuring
their own programs and writing self-evaluating performance
reports. Even in the NSF's Research.gov site, which I
mentioned, it is the award recipients who write the performance
reports.
In the private sector, Congress has recognized that this
doesn't work. Congress has required that publicly traded
companies must hire independent third party auditors to help
prepare and certify reports. Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,
corporate managers are personally liable for the veracity of
those reports. Congress might want to consider similar,
independent audits of agency performance reporting.
I am looking forward to the launch of the new
Performance.gov initiative by OMB, which promises to provide
data-driven reviews of progress toward clearly defined goals at
Federal agencies. Those reviews, however, won't be very
meaningful if they are self-reported or based on shaky data.
The progress Congress and the Obama administration have
made in making transparency, and especially online
transparency, a key objective for Government cannot be
overstated. The culture of secrecy that has long pervaded
Federal agencies is beginning to change. However, we must make
sure that Open Government is first and foremost about
transparency. And that transparency is clearly understood as
disclosure of Government performance in the service of greater
accountability.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brito follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you very much. I thank all of you for
preparing a statement.
I would like to begin, I have 5 minutes allotted, I am
going to yield those 5 minutes to my vice chairman, Mr. Kelly,
for him to start our opening questions.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being
here today.
I come from the private sector, so I have a little bit of
an idea about having skin in the game. And Mr. Brito, I am
really interested, when you talked about the principal and the
agent reporting program, because I have always thought, in my
business, you don't want the fox watching the hen house.
So could you expand a little bit more on where we should go
with this? Because I am having an awful tough time following
some, we talk the talk but we don't walk the walk in
Government? And we tell you how you should do it, but we never
do it ourselves? So if you could just expand a little bit on
what the purpose would be in having an outside agency looked
at. Because in my business, I always bring in outside auditors.
I would never, ever do it internally. It gives you a false
picture. It gives you a completely unrealistic idea of what is
going on with your business.
And I will tell you, the No. 1 thing that I find out when
we hire a new person, they come in after their first pay and
they say, I thought I was getting paid more. I say, well, this
is what we paid you. Now, look through all the deductions and
this is what you are taking home.
So there is a huge difference between what we pay and what
they take home. And they ask me, where did it go? And I say,
well, take a look and you can find out, it went to the
Government. And they say, well, what the heck are they doing
with my money? I say, you know what, that is anybody's guess,
isn't it?
So if you could just tell me a little bit about what you
would suggest as far as outside auditors.
Mr. Brito. Sure. Economists will talk about a concept
called principal agent problem, which is very simple. Let's say
you have a corporation which is owned by shareholders,
thousands of shareholders. They hire a board of directors to
manage a corporation and the board hires a CEO and the
management.
Now, the board can't be behind watching the CEO all the
time. And so for that reason, that is the very reason they hire
managers, to manage corporations. Quarterly, yearly, the board
meets to review the performance of management. What sort of
data do they look at? Well, they look at profit and loss. And
it is very clear.
With Government, we don't have profit and loss. So we need
to develop performance measurement. And the way that works is
very simple, this is what Congress did in the Government
Performance and Results Act, which is that, for a program, the
agency, before it begins a program, needs to say, these are the
results we expect to achieve. These are the data-driven
measurements that we will use to determine whether we met those
results. And then at the end of the period, whether it is a
year or quarterly, you measure and you see whether you met
those results.
If you didn't meet those results, well, then, Congress can
go look at that program, see how it can be fixed, see if it
needs to be eliminated. Unfortunately, the responsibility of
creating the measurements, of measuring and of reporting is all
on the very same agency that runs the program. And so that
creates, again, this principal agent problem.
In the private sector, you wouldn't expect simply to take
management's word about the performance of the company. You
bring in a third party auditor. That is required by Congress.
But even if it wasn't required by Congress, I would suspect
that shareholders and board members would want to audit the
information presented to them by management. So that is what I
am suggesting, that we take a lesson from that, in the private
sector, and bring it into Government.
Mr. Kelly. And I respect your statement that we don't have
profit. I would say we do have loss. And I have never seen any
business that could run this way consistently, a trillion
dollars in the red for three straight years, and feel that,
hey, we are doing all right.
Ms. Miller, one of the things I found interesting is in
your written testimony it says that one of the goals of the
mission statement, ``Sunlight is said to be the best of
disinfectants.'' I would ask you, and also Mr. Brito,
USAspending.gov and Recovery.gov have been criticized for not
containing the information that citizens are most interested
in. What information do you think is most important, what
should be made more public?
Ms. Miller. I will be glad to answer that. I think our
criticism with respect to the availability of data really
applies to Data.gov. We certainly agree with Mr. Brito's
assessment in terms of the amount of data that is actually on
that site.
Sunlight advocated, with the administration, that all the
data that is made available by Government be made available in
machine readable formats. As you heard from our Government
colleagues here, the administration has done that. But there is
just very little information that is made available. It is hard
for me to sit here, as a resident of Washington, DC, and say
what someone in your city would be most interested in. But
Sunlight has been exploring some of this, and we know people
are interested, desperately, in health care issues, they are
interested in education issues, they are interested in
consumer-related banking issues. So we are beginning, actually,
to develop apps from the publicly made available, the data that
has been made available either on their own Web sites or on
Data.gov, to move into this sort of consumer facing information
that our best instincts tell us need to be there.
It has not been easy to find this kind of data immediately
accessible. We need more of what citizens need. I think the
administration and the various agencies have been asking
citizens, what do they need. Again, to their credit, we have to
sort of pull back and maybe in another 6 months try to assess
that as Government.
Mr. Kelly. Thanks very much. My time is expired. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
I recognize Mr. Lynch for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the members of the panel for helping the
committee with its work.
I listened closely to your testimony. I just want to ask,
Ms. Miller, you reported that from the USDA Web site they had
listed the school lunch program, the cost of the school
breakfast and lunch program here in the United States was $12.7
billion. However, according to the USDA, their Web site lists
the cost at about $250,000. Actually, I think it was
USAspending.gov that actually listed it that way.
And then we have Mr. Smith, God bless him, and it sounds
like everything is just going great over there. I am just
wondering if, is that how you have assessed the accuracy of the
USDA reporting? How would you grade them, I guess?
Ms. Miller. Well, we don't grade the agencies. Because I
think all of them are struggling. So if we had to say which was
better than the others, as I mentioned in my testimony, I don't
think there is a single agency that would get an A. So there
are failures of different kinds and substance throughout the
agencies.
Why those spending amounts are recorded so differently I
honestly cannot answer. But I suggest Mr. Smith might be able
to answer why we see such discrepancies.
Mr. Lynch. Well, let me ask you then, you say that across
the board, that agencies are keeping two sets of books. And
this might be one example of that.
Ms. Miller. It may be.
Mr. Lynch. They keep a set of books for operational
purposes, but then when they report to the taxpayer, to the
public, it is in a different format, and it is difficult to
reconcile. How do we require that the agencies reconcile that
difference and give us usable information? Because I do agree
with my colleagues that sunlight is the best disinfectant. And
that is the responsibility of this Oversight Committee, to find
out how much is being spent, where it is being spent, is it
being spent wisely.
We had the Director of the Office of Personnel Management
here earlier this week. He could not tell me the number of
contractors that we have for the U.S. Government. He thinks it
is around 10 million. But I can't even find out how many folks
we actually have out there working for the Government. There is
a lot of pressure on Federal employees, but here we have these
10 million contractors, at least, I guess, working for
different aspects of our Government. It just doesn't seem like
we have a handle on this at all.
I applaud your efforts, and I don't mean to single anybody
out. But we need a lot more work done on this.
Ms. Miller. Yes, absolutely. And I think the first step to
that is oversight. Well, perhaps the first step was the
analysis which the Sunlight Foundation has done in expanding
that analysis. Sunlight only looked at grants. We have not
looked at any of the contract information that has been
reported. So we have no idea of how much that would be.
Mr. Lynch. Well, get on that, will you? [Laughter.]
I am kidding.
Mr. Miller. We have actually requested of the
administration the necessary documents that we need to do that,
and they have told us that we could not have that information.
So we FOIA'd it 6 months ago and we are still waiting. Because
we would very much like to move into examining the grants, the
quality of the grants.
Mr. Lynch. Thanks, Ms. Miller. I do want to give Mr. Smith,
in fairness, an opportunity to respond. Because I used his
agency as an example of the filing there, as a glaring example
of mis-reporting. So Mr. Smith, have a whack at me.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Congressman Lynch.
Let me first say, with transparency comes another set of
eyes, always another set of eyes. I think it is exceedingly
important that as people identify those things, if we have an
anomaly, we identify them, we work through them. I think that
is the value of transparency. So I think we appreciate the
outside view and the particular question that you asked and
that Ms. Miller brought up in her statement on child nutrition
programs in particular.
When looking at the legislative intent of the FFATA Act,
and that individuals would not be reported for awards, the
school lunch program, and also being below $25,000 for the
first 3 years of that act, we did not report individual awards.
We have reassessed that as we have gone along, as questions
were raised, and at the beginning of this fiscal year, child
nutrition programs will be reported in there.
So again, I think it is a matter of, what is being asked,
how we are reporting it and then how do you track that back to
the authoritative records. And to the point on audits, we are
strong believers in audits. Every year we go through a
financial audit. We also do audits on our financial systems,
SAS-70, to account for that.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you very much.
I recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Farenthold, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Farenthold. Good morning, and thank you all for coming
to visit with us.
I just have a broad overview question. Do you think part of
the data problems, and I guess I will direct that to Mr. Smith
or Dr. Harris, because you work within the agencies, is there
some level of accountability for the data that you report? What
procedures do you have in place to check that the stuff you are
publishing, both on your Web site, and sending to some of these
collector Web sites, is accurate?
Mr. Harris. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. At
the Department of Education, we are actually very proud of the
quality of the data. I say that because we have a four-way
match. We do an extract before we submit data to
USAspending.gov. And we match that against our financial
system, we match it against the data stream that we send, and
then we match it against what is actually in USAspending.gov.
Now, it does go through a treatment when it hits
USAspending.gov, and that is when we get the opportunity to
actually make those changes. But I do think at the core, and
someone spoke about it earlier, I think at the core of data
quality is having integrated systems such that human beings do
not touch that data between source and reporting. I think a
large part of the reporting problem lies there.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. I would just echo my
colleague, Dr. Harris' statement, we want to go to the
authoritative data source. We don't want to reconcile it
multiple times along the way. So put it in once, read it many
times and do the reporting. I think the issue we face is there
are sometimes subsets that we are looking at, when you don't
have the whole picture, and we are trying to recreate that, is
where we start to get differences, and when one group is
looking at one thing and the other.
But we put a very repeatable, rigorous process in. Any time
there is a new requirement, we try to go back to that
authoritative source so we are not reworking it. We check from
the agency's sub-feeder systems into the core financial system,
do the edit check there, then we check it at OMB before it goes
into USAspending.gov. So there are multiple checks in place,
and then certainly our first standard is high data quality and
no rework.
Mr. Farenthold. And I guess Mr. Brito may be the one to ask
this next question, but if anybody else wants to jump in, feel
free. When we look at these, and maybe Ms. Miller might kick in
here, too, when we look at these aggregationsites, are we
comparing apples to apples? Is there equivalent of generally
accepted accounting practices for the Government? Or are we
just getting thrown data as each individual agency sees it, and
there is no real standard or accountability where we know we
are looking at accurate data and able to do comparisons that
are reasonable?
Mr. Brito. Well, I would defer to the Sunlight Foundation.
But it is obvious they had to FOIA information to do the
reconciling.
Ms. Miller. The answer is, the data is widely dissimilar.
And so whether the GAO's initial study that they did, or the
more complete analysis that we did, we are finding all kinds of
inconsistencies, whether it is consistency of how the data is
entered, whether it is completeness of the data or the
timeliness of it, there are lots of problems.
I have been thinking that USAspending.gov is a relatively
new phenomenon. It was passed in 2006, I think it was available
in 2007. So I think the agencies are having trouble adjusting
to these aggregationsites. But we have to figure this out
further downstream. I would certainly agree with the notion of
the less human hands involved in this, the better and the more
consistent reporting we will have across agencies.
Mr. Farenthold. And Ms. Miller, let me ask you this. You
had to Freedom of Information Act these agencies for
information. Do you have an overall sense that the agencies are
friendly to publishing this information? Or are you running
into noes, and agencies saying, we don't really want this
information out?
Ms. Miller. Let me clarify. We did not have to do a FOIA
for any information for the original analysis that we did that
focused on the quality of the grants reporting to
USAspending.gov. We have had to create a FOIA to get the FPDS
data for, in order to do the contract analysis that we wish to
do.
Mr. Farenthold. Are the agencies being cooperative, or are
you running into stonewalls?
Ms. Miller. We actually don't receive the data from the
agencies directly. We have not had that kind of interaction. We
are taking the data from USAspending.gov and comparing it to
other sources of Government information.
Mr. Farenthold. Thank you very much. I am out of time.
Mr. Lankford. Mr. Murphy, 5 minutes.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Just a few quick questions. Ms. Miller, I am interested in
your experience with the Department of Defense data in
particular. This is the one agency that still cannot get a
clean audit at the Federal Government level. It is obviously
the largest procurement agency at the Federal level. There is
an enormous amount of very important data there that I think
even as Members of Congress, we don't always know whether we
have proper access to.
And maybe you don't have an answer to this question, but I
wanted to know about your experiences with the quality of data
and the amount of data that comes out of the Department of
Defense and how relevant that is to individuals that are trying
to understand the decisions that are being made there, and how
that money is being spent.
Ms. Miller. Let me consult with my colleagues just briefly
to see what their experience has been with respect to DOD data
on USAspending.gov.
My colleague, Kaitlin Lee, reports that most of what
happens at DOD is done through contracting. They do very little
direct grants. We have only looked at the grants. But if we
receive this FOIA information that we have requested, we will
be able to report on that in about 6 months. So I am sorry, we
don't have that information.
Mr. Murphy. I bring that up, because as we try to grapple
with a lot of complex spending questions, I think what Members
find is that even we don't have access to important data.
Certainly the public doesn't, and Mr. Brito is nodding his
head. So I am happy to give you a chance at this question as
well.
But as a for instance, when it comes to contracting
decisions, what we have found is that over the last several
years there has been a massive outflow of contracts to overseas
companies. And we get just a shadow of data regarding those
contracts. We know, for instance, from year to year how many
waivers to the requirement to purchase here in America are
granted, but we don't know anything more. We get a report on
the number of waivers, but we don't know what type of waivers
they were, why the waivers were granted.
And so there is a larger conversation from a statutory
perspective that has to happen about what kind of data the
public receives from the Department of Defense. But I will be
very interested to hear the results of your contracting audit
going forward. Because I think there is a frustration in the
public, especially with regard to DOD data. And Mr. Brito, you
are nodding your head, so I am happy to give you a chance at
that as well.
Mr. Brito. The only point I would like to make, bringing it
back to performance data, is that DOD is one of the least
successful when it comes to performance data. One reason
perhaps is that they have a quadrennial review process. They
sort of feel that is the place to do it.
When we talk about having requirements that an agency head
certify performance data, the Secretary of Defense for, let's
see, during the Bush administration, never signed the
certification. Never did. So that is something that we need to
focus on.
Mr. Murphy. And just to switch topics, back to you, Dr.
Harris, on this issue that was brought up earlier on student
loans, the total amount in student loans on USAspending.gov is
somewhere just south of $7 trillion, it is clearly not the
right number. And I wanted to just before the panel was up, to
give you a chance to maybe explain why that number appears on
the Web site, and what happened there.
Mr. Harris. Thank you, Congressman Murphy, for that
question. In fact, I was going to jump in when Congressman
Farenthold raised the issue of aggregation.
In my investigation, while I certainly agree with the
assessment by the Sunlight Foundation that there is a
tremendous amount of work we need to do in improving the
timeliness and especially the quality of the data, in the
instance of the $6 trillion loan anomaly, in my investigation,
I have found that it is more an issue of aggregation. Here is
what my investigation led to.
When we report the loan amount to USAspending.gov, the
instructions tell us to report it at the face value. And in
fact, every single time we report for that specific loan, we
report it at the face value. Sometimes it goes up, and
sometimes it goes down, based on activity against that loan.
But if you aggregate that, unlike other data elements that
you can aggregate and they give you an accurate amount, if you
aggregate that amount over time, you are going to come up with
a ridiculous number. But this is where context becomes the
biggest issue we have with Open Government reporting. We have
to do a significantly better job at informing the public on not
what just the dataset means, what the data attribute means.
So we believe it is the aggregation that was incorrect.
When I look at the data on USAspending.gov, it is accurate for
the Department of Education.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
Mr. Walberg, 5 minutes, please.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
panel for being here.
I want to followup on Mr. Farenthold's questioning of Ms.
Miller. I listened to that question, but I want to move to Dr.
Harris and Mr. Smith with this question. Has the Obama
administration been helpful in assisting your Department in
creating your Open Government plan, and your efforts to meet
the Open Government directive? And I would ask you both, maybe
we can start with Dr. Harris.
Mr. Harris. Absolutely. I think the No. 1 help, if you
will, would be in the way of a challenge. And we look at the
Department of Education, we look at Open Government in two
ways. Probably a slightly unconventional way. One is certainly
providing data to the general public in a way where they can
take the data and do what they need to do with it.
But the other piece that we push hard on is collaboration.
And when you initially hear the word collaboration, you are
thinking of the public collaborating with the Government. But
when you look at our Race to the Top program, and you look at
our innovation program, we are actually providing data to the
public that they can collaborate with each other. This is where
we feel true innovation in education comes from, not just
interacting with the Federal Government.
So the Obama administration has helped us with that kind of
out of the box thinking.
Mr. Walberg. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. Yes, I think it was
a very collaborative effort, as Dr. Harris has said. The
Secretary asked me to serve on a working group that the White
House convened, and I think every agency was asked to do that.
And we worked through, and I think a testament to that is Ms.
Miller and other groups, such as OMB Watch, being invited also
to comment as we developed these plans, to make sure that we
had a full and open conversation as each agency developed their
plans and we shared those plans across the Federal Government
and sought to put out the best product. Then we iterated those
as we went forward.
I think one of the most important things is that as we are
looking at transparency, collaboration and participation, how
does that drive the mission forward? What is the economic
impact? If we are putting data out there, what is the ability
for citizens to take that and have an economic impact for us in
those rural areas? Or if it is food safety, how do we push the
Nation forward by being more open, transparent and accountable?
Mr. Walberg. Very important, with both entities, to have
that transparency. And the administration as well.
Let me continue the questioning with the two gentlemen.
Under OMB's directive, each agency selected a ``high level''
official to oversee the Open Government initiatives. How did
your agency select its high level official, and what
considerations did you undergo in the selection process?
Mr. Harris. At the Department of Education, we certainly
did not see the issue as a technology issue. It was more of a
business processing issue. I am currently the senior
accountable official for data quality at the Department of
Education. I wore, for many years at the Department of
Education, the chief financial officer hat. But I am a
technologist.
But what is more important is, as the official, I bring
together individuals, subject matter experts from the program
offices, subject matter experts from finance, and subject
matter experts from technology to make sure that we get it
right. So that is kind of how we did it.
Mr. Walberg. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Sir, the Secretary asked me to take the lead.
But it was very clear that I myself was not going to get this
done. So we had a team-based approach. We built a rigorous
governance structure around it. It was myself and the Deputy
Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment. And we
actually have a meeting standing, executive steering committee
made up of under secretaries, deputy under secretaries, across
all the mission areas, to ensure that we continue on this
effort and make steady progress.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you. I yield back my time.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
I am yielding myself 5 minutes here. And I think we are
approaching a time for a vote, just to give you a heads-up. It
should hit about the time we hit the break in between. But I
have several questions I want to be able to talk through with
Dr. Harris and Mr. Smith, especially. How do you choose the
datasets? From what I am seeing, what is coming out, there was
a requirement to get at least three high value data sets. How
are those chosen? What was the process you went through? If you
could be brief, I have a ton of questions.
Mr. Harris. Sure. As you are well aware, Mr. Chairman, we
have a very, very visible Secretary in Arnie Duncan. Mr. Duncan
spends a tremendous amount of time on the road, and he is
constantly asking the citizens what information do you want.
Much of our information flows down from senior leadership in
that way. And that is kind of how we decided.
Mr. Lankford. I will come right back to that. Go ahead, Mr.
Smith.
Mr. Smith. I think I just alluded to it, we try to apply a
lens to all our datasets that said how are we pushing the
economy forward, what is the value of these datasets from
safety and security of the food supply, and every mission area
increasing exports. How can we put information out there that
furthers the goals of the Nation as we move forward.
Mr. Lankford. Would that be for Data.gov or
USAspending.gov, or would that be the same for both of those?
Mr. Smith. We applied this to any data, any information
asset within our mission areas.
Mr. Lankford. When you are choosing, as far as priority of
where to put things, obviously your agency has a very good Web
site, for both your agencies, and the information that is out
there. When you are choosing information, where does it land?
The agency Web site, Data.gov, USAspending.gov, all of the
above? There are multiple other portals that are out there as
well.
Mr. Harris. Actually, all of the above. In fact, prior to
USAspending.gov, Data.gov provided 20 toolsets and datasets out
there for our customers and clients to use. We actually looked
at how that data was being used and asked the question, what
part of this data do you like, what don't you like.
Mr. Smith. Yes, we apply it, again, to the whole portfolio.
Let me give you a quick example, the farmer's markets. We
expose the information on where all the farmer's markets are in
the Nation. We have seen maps produced, so we are having an
impact on small business and farmers to sell fresh produce
throughout the country, and hope that increases traffic to
those markets.
Mr. Lankford. I spend time, obviously, going through a lot
of the things that are out there as far as information and try
to get a good handle on it. But one of the interesting things,
I am sure you have done the same thing on it, when I go to
Data.gov and I input agriculture, or I go through the search
features, and there are multiple different vehicles for that,
or education, on that, when I go to Data.gov and ask for just
raw data on it for education, it comes up with nine datasets
that come up for education. And for agriculture, it comes up
with 20 total. And the 20 that are out there, the farmer's
market one you just illustrated, all of them are from previous
years. They are older data on that.
So just trying to process through, obviously there are
multiple places I think it is located. It is just having
Data.gov, the goal of it was to have a place where you type it
in, it all comes up there. And it is actually not coming up
there when you start doing a search on it.
Mr. Smith. I will certainly go back and take a look at
that. The point is to have a kind of a one stop shop for
information portals. So we will certainly look at that.
Some of the datasets were existing, but there were others
that had not been exposed through that manner. One is USDA
nutritional data base, and that is one I talked about, in which
people are now making mobile applications in order to reduce
obesity and increase the health of our constituents.
Mr. Lankford. Sure.
Mr. Harris. Mr. Chairman, I think you are actually
highlighting the very important issue of context. For example,
when you look at the CFDA data base, and you look at
USAspending.gov, the average citizen would expect to see the
exact same number in both places.
Mr. Lankford. Correct.
Mr. Harris. But in fact, the reporting is done at different
periods of time. Are we doing a good enough job in explaining
to the average citizen the period of time, the context of the
data, the answer is no, we need to do a better job.
Mr. Lankford. I think what we have created, it is the
energy that the Obama administration has put out, saying, let's
get this out there. But now we have created so many different
sites, dot gov, that are out there, no one really knows where
to go to get it. And we don't have a single portal to say, go
here, and it will link to everything else. We are missing that.
So that is a big piece I think we have to be able to resolve on
this, just getting the basics of where it goes from there.
As far as searchable pieces, and this is another thing from
USAspending.gov, one of the things I found often when I go
through it, USDA had a piece of it, there is an Excel file that
would come up, multiple different versions of it, but it would
have the address, for instance, all in one file. So when I
wanted to search for Oklahoma, and say, what are all the
different grants that are out there for Oklahoma, it is not
possible to do. Because if I just type in OK as a search, I get
every look, crook and hook coming up as well in my search. And
so just the basics of breaking up the fields becomes very
important.
What data standards do you put out there to say, this is
how every single data base is going to be put out to make it
consistent and searchable?
Mr. Smith. I think you are pointing to one of the
challenges many of us face in large Cabinet level agencies, or
any large organization, corporate or public. There are multiple
systems brought up over time, and many of them in non-standard
manner. So it is a very large lift to go back and standardize
in each and every area. So we are very focused on that, in
particular, the areas we are focused on right now are
transparency and the reporting areas you have talked about. We
have been able to take the existing data, put it into a
readable format and get it out there.
When you throw that net even more largely, there are
challenges out there, and we consistently strive to work on
those. A good example of what we are doing in the Department of
Agriculture is farmers report acreage, are reporting multiple
different ways across multiple programs. So we have set out to
use the national information exchange model as the standard,
not only that the farmer uses, but agribusiness and Government,
so that everybody can report and share information in the same
manner.
Mr. Lankford. Right. I would assume every different one of
those groups, as well as every grant that is out there, has a
unique i.d. that it is using. It is difficult to even track, is
this the same vendor as this, they might have a similar name
and they might have a little difference on it. Is there a way
to be able to set it up and say, this is the unique i.d., so if
we are searching, no matter if they have a subset underneath
that general agency, we can still track it and say, all of
those that have this name, they are all here and we can search
all of them? Is that possible to be able to do?
Mr. Smith. The CCR, and Don's effort, looked to get one
master vendor data file in which that solves the issue of
contractors and who we are working with. And I think we have
made great strides on that front. But it remains an issue that
we are working on constantly, to keep that data clean.
Mr. Harris. Certainly this is pointed out, I believe, in
the Sunlight Foundation's report, something that we have known
for many years, that an entity could have multiple DUNS
numbers. And oftentimes, if they are not linked properly, and
you are making decisions based on aggregate data, you are not
making good decisions. So a lot of work needs to be done in a
unique identifier.
Mr. Lankford. Give me your timing on that. Give me your
thinking as far as work to be done. I know this has been going
on for a while. How does that get resolved, and what kind of
time period is needed to resolve that? I hate to say it this
way, is that up the food chain from you? Someone from OMB is
going to have to be able to handle some of those things, or is
that something that is within the agency?
Mr. Harris. I believe it is up the food chain, but I
believe it is also a partnership with the public. Because they
are the ones who have to do business with the Federal
Government, they are the ones who actually have to get these
identifiers. And they have to concur that one identifier for
the entity makes sense, and that they are willing to do it.
But to answer your question, how far away is that, I don't
believe we have even started in really aggressively attacking
that issue.
Mr. Lankford. Thankfully, we have someone from OMB who is
going to be hanging out in the next panel, and we will get a
chance to ask that question in a moment.
Let me just see if there are other Members. My time has
expired, but I want to thank you very much for coming. We will
have a panel that will be following. If you would like to stay
around, we have votes that are going to be happening
momentarily. You would be able to hear Mr. Werfel's comments,
or you may leave, as well. Thank you very much for being here.
If we have additional followup questions, we will try to
contact you directly.
With that, this panel is concluded.
Mr. Werfel, if you could come to the dais here, and we
could have a quick chat.
[Pause.]
Mr. Lankford. In the interest of time, I am going to go
ahead and swear Mr. Werfel in in just a moment, and restart
this second panel, and allow him to do his opening statement.
We will watch time on votes and see what happens. You are
welcome to sit in and be a part of this as well. We will get
started in just a moment.
[Recess.]
Mr. Lankford. The second panel for this subcommittee will
begin again now. We are going to recognize this panel. Mr.
Danny Werfel, he is the Controller of the Office of Federal
Financial Management, OFFM, within the Office of Management and
Budget. He is responsible for coordinating OMB's efforts to
initiate Government-wide improvements in all areas of financial
management, which I would assume would be a very large,
complicated task.
So thank you for being here. Pursuant to all committee
rules, all witnesses are sworn in before they testify. If you
would please rise and raise your right hand.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Lankford. Thank you very much. You may be seated. Let
the record reflect the witness answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Werfel, I am going to allow you to do your opening
statement as well, then we will watch carefully for the vote
time. Hopefully we will be able to get questions and your
statement in all at once, and we will just see how time moves
from there. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL I. WERFEL, CONTROLLER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT
AND BUDGET
Mr. Werfel. Thank you, Chairman Lankford, Ranking Member
Connolly and members of the subcommittee, for the invitation to
discuss our progress in creating a more open Government.
On his first day in office, President Obama signed a
memorandum on transparency and open Government that set forth a
new paradigm for an open and accountable government. Since
then, the administration has been unwavering in its commitment
to increase transparency, participation and collaboration to
make our Government more open, accountable, and efficient.
A lot has happened over the last 2 years. The
administration launched the Accountable Government initiative,
which outlines a performance management approach that drives
agencies' top priorities, cuts waste, reforms contracting,
closes the information technology gap, promotes accountability
and innovation through open government, and continues our
efforts to attract and motivate top talent to the Federal
Government.
Federal agencies are becoming more open, publishing
detailed Open Government plans and road maps in compliance with
our Open Government directive. Final agency plans feature key
openness initiatives, the identification of data the public
would consider highly valuable, and new agency Open Government
Web pages to facilitate greater transparency.
The Federal Government's data has become the public's data.
Data.gov is a Federal one stop data sharing platform designed
to democratize access to data with hundreds of thousands of
datasets in a common format housed in a central location.
Federal spending clearly is becoming more transparent.
We launched paymentaccuracy.gov in June 2010. This contains
information about current and historical rates and amounts of
improper payments, information on why improper payments occur,
and information about what agencies are doing to reduce and
recover improper payments.
Recovery.gov presents unprecedented levels of transparency
and accountability, so that citizens can monitor the progress
of the Recovery Act, to track Federal contracts, grants and
loans, to an unprecedented degree, and to provide feedback on
the status and results of those investments at the community
level.
USAspending.gov is a one stop site that provides the public
with an understanding of how Federal dollars are spent,
accounting for billions of dollars spent across the executive
branch agency. The site not only contains valuable information
on Federal spending, but has been recently expanded to include
data on sub-awards. The public can now see where Federal grant
and contract dollars go down to the sub-grantee and sub-
contractor levels.
Providing easy access to information is critical to ensure
that the Government is held accountable for how it uses
taxpayer dollars. While much progress has been made, going
forward we need to continue our efforts to fulfill the
President's State of the Union promise, to build people's faith
in the institution of government. We need to continue to refine
the collection of data, provide easy access to information,
collaborate with our stakeholders and encourage participation
in how we conduct business.
The administration's commitment to open government is firm.
The mechanisms that have been and continue to be implemented
constitute a new way of doing business that will persist for
decades to come.
While we have accomplished many things, there is still much
work, as I have mentioned. The public cannot realize the full
utility of transparent Federal information if the data across
our agencies are incompatible. Demonstrating our commitment to
quality assurance, we have already identified potential methods
for data standardization, particularly within Federal spending
information. Data standardization will not only increase the
usability of the information for the public, but will also
achieve long-term benefits across Federal agencies.
Current efforts to provide quality and real-time data to
the public can consume many resources, and at times, manual
process to ensure the data from multiple systems and sources
reconcile. To sustain and improve upon these efforts, inter-
agency work groups have been launched, with the commitment to
drive high quality Federal spending information and reevaluate
and realign the underlying data standards.
As we continue to buildupon the solid foundations of an
open government, we must constantly gauge our progress against
the guiding principles of transparency, participation and
collaboration. We embrace the opportunities to work with all of
our stakeholders to reach the shared end goal of an open
government.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Werfel follows:]
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Mr. Lankford. Thank you very much.
I am moving to recognizing Mr. Kelly, the vice chairman, to
begin our questioning time.
Mr. Kelly. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Werfel, both President Obama and the OMB have stressed
the importance of government that is transparent, participatory
and collaborative. How is OMB enacting this guidance, and what
role does OMB believe public citizens have in the process?
Mr. Werfel. The public citizens have a central role. I
think one of the tenets of open government is that
accountability is necessary to push the types of results and
improve government performance that citizens demand, and that
we have a responsibility to reach.
What we see day in and day out is that the more information
is shared publicly about Federal activities, in particular, for
example, where our Federal dollars are going, the more not only
do citizens participate and engage in helping keep us
accountable for those dollars, but the Government agencies
themselves feel more accountable. As was mentioned in the
previous panel, sunlight is a great disinfectant. We certainly
see that happening throughout Government. I think the Recovery
Act, in particular, is a great example of that.
Mr. Kelly. OK, and I appreciate that. But my question is,
if we are really looking for transparency and we are looking
for participation and collaboration, why weren't you willing to
go ahead and appear with the rest of the panel today?
Mr. Werfel. For the record, Congressman, I would state that
I am here now, answering your questions and can be----
Mr. Kelly. That wasn't my question, and I understand what
you are saying. But we keep talking about, we want
transparency, we want people to have access to us. And then
when we have an opportunity to appear on a panel with other
folks, you decline that. Makes no sense to me.
But I come from the private world. I don't come from this
world. I really am trying to understand why we talk one way and
we act an entirely different way.
Mr. Werfel. I think the elements of the administration's
policy in terms of witnesses and how they appear is something
that I am happy to spend more time with you on, and get more
information for you. Again, I will repeat, the bottom line is I
am here and ready to answer any questions you have.
Mr. Kelly. And I recognize the fact that you are here. But
I really do, in the world I come from, I absolutely hate tap
dancing. When I can't get an answer, and you do not have to be
diplomatic with me, you can be direct, and I would hope you
understand, I am that same type of person.
So whenever we have an administration that says, we want to
be open, we want to work with you, we want you to know
everything, and then we invite them to sit here with us in the
panel, with the public, and they don't show up, and the answer
is, I will get back with you, I don't think that is fair to the
American people. I think it does a disservice, and it certainly
discredits a policy that is supposed to be open and
transparent.
I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman. I don't think you can
answer that, right? Or we are going to go back on what you did
say?
Mr. Werfel. My direct answer to you is, you have requested
is that I am not the correct OMB official to answer the
question on the administration's policies with respect to
witnesses testifying before Congress. Therefore, I have to go
back and get the answer to your question.
Mr. Kelly. Bad policy leads to bad process leads to a bad
image of what the people in this country really expect of us,
and they really do expect us to say what we mean and mean what
we say. That is just a real basic definition of integrity. And
I would suggest to you that in this town, we had better start
understanding what it is the American people expect from us.
And they do not expect to be given the runaround on things.
So I appreciate the fact that you are here, and the fact
that you can't answer. But I would appreciate, in writing, the
answers to why you could not appear with the other panel.
Thank you, and I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Kelly.
I hate to tell everyone this, because it is going to cause
a significant delay, but we have votes that have already been
called on the floor of the House. We have also been asked by
the people that we represent to vote for them. So we are
expected to be there as well.
We are going to recess temporarily. This hearing will
resume in probably about 40 to 45 minutes. We will resume again
with the questioning and then be able to address our questions.
With that, we will stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Chairman Issa [presiding]. The hearing will come to order.
The subcommittee chairman will be here in a moment. But one
of the few great prerogatives of the Chair is I also have the
ability to bring it back to order.
Thank you for staying over the voting break. You will see
Members straggling back shortly.
I have a short series of questions for you. And they really
have to do with the work that the RAT board has been doing. As
far as we can tell, and both myself, the former chairman and
the current ranking member, have all gone over, reviewed it,
seen some of the discoveries. But particularly seen what we see
is the first time in which there has been a direct outreach to
get reporting, to get it in a format that is consistent and
usable, and then use it against other data bases that detect
fraud, at the current time, OMB, from what we can tell, has no
comprehensive plan to bring a similar recipient reporting
system across the Government. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Werfel. Yes. First of all, I would say that we are
completely committed to carrying forward some of the important
accomplishments that the Recovery Board has had. One of the
major areas where they have been successful, as you have noted,
is the deployment of a forensic data tool and a fraud detection
tool. It is for that reason that the President's budget
includes a proposal to move into the Department of Treasury----
Chairman Issa. You are talking about the $10 million?
Mr. Werfel. The $10 million for the do not pay solution,
which would adopt very similar approaches that the Recovery
Board has adopted in terms of having a central place where the
Treasury Department, in this case, would be assisting agencies
and looking across all data sources where we can get access to,
both public and----
Chairman Issa. That is where I want to stop you.
Mr. Werfel. Please.
Chairman Issa. The President, by executive order, could
require all the agencies, I have been told, at least, to
cooperate in a way in which the reporting would be assumed, and
thus that $10 million investment would be able to guarantee
that it would have access subject to data integrity and ability
to transmit it to do the kind of work the RAT board has done.
As you know, the RAT board leveraged basically Katrina-Rita
data. They leveraged existing one-time events in order to get
more access.
They have been unable, except anecdotally, by transfers
that they have been able to get, they have been unable to get
the real access that would allow cross-platform. And Treasury
certainly would have the authority and the confidence.
Are you prepared to, either legislatively or through
executive action, get that kind of buy-in? Or will it be, with
all due respect, the old mealy mouthed, we are OMB, we do
things collegially, we get buy-in, which is crap, it never
works. And if you say it does, I will have Mitch Daniels
sitting in your seat, explaining that it doesn't work by Sunday
morning.
That is my question to you, because your teeth are not
sharp enough to cut through the bureaucracy. Are you asking for
something that would give either you and/or in this case
Treasury the teeth to make this a reality?
Mr. Werfel. I think the answer to that is yes. We have to
balance, as we break down data silos that exist in Government
today, and create the, enable us to do the type of analytics
that are going to drive more powerful assessments around
finding anomalies, fraud and error, there will be other public
policy balances that need to come into place, including, for
example, privacy and other implications and data security. It
is my position that we can achieve a far greater efficiency and
streamlining of data share and date interoperability across
Federal agencies, while still meeting important privacy and
security objectives.
Chairman Issa. What data does the Federal Government have
which you are prohibited from accessing for purposes of
analysis?
Mr. Werfel. For purposes of, well, there are, for example,
one of the more protected data bases is the IRS data base, as
an example. And to the extent there is personally identifiable
information or tax information, Section 6103 of the Code would
prevent that type of movement of data.
Another great example is the National Directory of New
Hires.
Chairman Issa. Right, but let's go through, because the IRS
is the best known by the American people. The IRS routinely
takes information in, digests it and responds to State laws,
Federal and State laws. If you have a deadbeat dad in Minnesota
who leaves and goes to Florida, or any other State, the
Minnesota input data leads to an output data that confirms the
availability of the dollars, allows for the grabbing of the tax
return and thus the movement of it, either to public entities
that have taken care of the mother and child, or directly to
the individual, or for that matter, even to a State coffer on a
State tax.
So if you have that authority within the Code, can't you,
without looking at it, create a leverage where you send the
data in a format the IRS can absorb, with your request, and you
get back only the limited response? Isn't it true that you
can't even pierce the IRS, as long as you don't extract the
data?
Mr. Werfel. Yes. There are, I am personally aware of
situations in which IRS data transfers can occur in a different
format, in order to protect certain 6103 restrictions. So you
are right about that.
Chairman Issa. OK, my time is expired. When you said yes,
you are prepared to do it----
Mr. Lankford [presiding]. I can yield to the gentleman an
additional 2 minutes.
Chairman Issa. I thank the gentleman, but I will hopefully
not use it all. You didn't say that you would ask the President
by executive order. You apparently historically do not have the
legislative authority. Are you going to come to us for
legislative authority, and if so, when?
Mr. Werfel. I think, let me step back and say that there
are different avenues we can dig to break down these data
silos. In some case administrative, and in some case, we would
need legislation. I believe we are in a, as we move forward on
our efforts to detect fraud and understand more what we need to
do to knock down these data silos, I think we will be back and
asking you for help, legislative help to create these types of
data transfers.
I don't have a date certain by which I know we will come
back. But it is our commitment to work with this committee in
particular on these issues.
Chairman Issa. OK. My closing question, which I would
appreciate just answered for the record, or briefly respond and
then expand, forensics clearly are not going to be enough
alone. If I were Visa, MasterCard or any of the other, if you
will, world class organizations, real-time, online assessment
is how you prevent the loss, not how you simply see if the
courts are too backed up to go after the person once you find
them. Ten million is obviously not for that.
Do you have a plan to make any portion of the Government as
proactive as Visa, MasterCard?
Mr. Werfel. I don't know that I could articulate for you an
overarching plan. I will say that I agree with the principle
that prevention comes first versus paying and chasing errors
after they occur. Absolutely. There are situations that are
emerging today where agencies are taking more aggressive steps
to pause, to review, to place moratoriums on certain payments
before they go out the door. That is part of the prevention.
But a global, cross-Government plan that initiates the type
of neural networks that you are talking about, we don't have
that in place yet. I think if we get to a point where we start
to knock down some of these data silos, that will open the
door. We need to bring some smart people around the table to
figure out how to enable such, leveraging such a new data
environment.
Chairman Issa. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you. I would like to recognize the
ranking member, Mr. Cummings, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Werfel, let me ask you this. In the other panel, Ellen
Miller talked about some agencies that were not reporting. Were
you here?
Mr. Werfel. I was.
Mr. Cummings. Can you talk about that for a moment? And I
was just wondering what we are doing to try to make sure that
they do report.
Mr. Werfel. Thank you for the opportunity to respond to
those issues.
First of all, I think it is a very important thing that the
Sunlight Foundation is doing by raising these issues to our
attention. It is part of transparency at work. We don't just
self-identify errors, we rely on the public to be reviewing our
reports and finding those issues as well.
I think in some cases, we are going to find that the public
is going to report, like a group like Sunlight Foundation, an
error, and it is going to have a real, immediate impact and be
a legitimate issue for us to address. And sometimes, the error
has an easy explanation and it is not really an error at all. I
think there was an example that was provided around the school
lunch program, where USAspending.gov doesn't require us to
report payments under $25,000, which is the bulk of the school
lunch payments. That is why there is an absence of information.
All that said, there are criticisms that were discussed in
the first panel that are valid. And we are not where we need to
be in terms of the full completeness of the data. We have
issued a policy at OMB that we think is having an impact on
this, that requires Federal agencies to initiate more robust
quality assurance programs around the completeness, accuracy
and timeliness of their data, starting with the senior
accountable official and moving forward to the types of
frameworks we see in our traditional financial statement
reporting process: risk management, internal control review,
reconciliation of information in our accounting systems to what
is being reported on USAspending.gov.
All of that is underway. But Congressman, it is an evolving
process. As we move forward, there will continue to be points
in time which we expect there will be some errors. And we will
get better and better at this as we go.
Mr. Cummings. I often say that there are certain things
that are a project and not a product. Certain things are ever-
evolving.
The question is, are we doing, are we moving fast enough?
We just heard from the Commissioner of the SEC yesterday, and
in one of her reports she talked about how folks on Wall Street
were moving so fast and coming up with all kinds of new
products. In some instances, so fast it was hard for SEC to
keep up with them.
I am just wondering, do we have, first of all, the
technology that we need? Is it, from what you can see, problems
stemming from folks who are just not doing what they are
supposed to do? Is there a bigger hammer that needs to be
hammered? I am just wondering.
Mr. Werfel. I think it is a mixture. I would say that there
are moments that I see, in my work, where it is almost
astonishing, the progress that is being made. So for example, I
look at Recovery.gov today as an example. The information that
is there, the level of detail, the functionality of that Web
site. And I think that is really a cutting edge tool that is
probably far ahead of where I thought we might be 5 years ago,
if I was testifying before you then.
And so that is exciting. And that, I think, rallies the
rest of the community around what is possible. And really opens
the door to even greater efforts.
At the same time, there are agencies that I could probably
say I would have thought would have been further along if I was
testifying here 5 years ago.
To answer your question, I think a bigger hammer is needed.
I think what you have today is a dichotomy that was reported on
the first panel that is accurate. We have what I would argue is
a very robust financial statement audit process that exists
today. Started in 1990, it has been 20 years. We have 20 of the
24 major agencies in Government receiving a clean audit
opinion. A lot of effort goes into scrutinizing, to the 10th
decimal point, the numbers that go on our balance sheets and
our other basic financial statements. And we have developed a
very robust process in response that is moving forward and
achieving important things in terms of financial reporting
reliability.
That robustness does not exist with respect to the
information as reported on USAspending.gov. The spend
information, as we call it, is not completely wired into the
financial statement audit process. We think that we need to
look at that audit process and that reporting model to
potentially realign some of that audit scrutiny around spending
information. I think you would see a difference in results if
agencies felt the accountability of an auditor's eye on these
issues.
Mr. Cummings. I ask for unanimous consent that I have an
additional 3 minutes, as the chairman had.
Mr. Lankford. Absolutely.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
In your testimony, you also talk about the breadth and
depth of reporting required by the Recovery Act, 200,000 prime
and sub-recipients file public quarterly reports, with up to 99
distinct data fields. As you point out, this is more frequent
than other major financial reporting required by the Federal
Government. And yet, Recovery.gov seems to be the best example
of Federal spending transparency. Indeed, 99.6 percent of prime
recipients filed on time last quarter.
So I have to ask you this. Where did Recovery.gov succeed
and USAspending.gov struggle, and why?
Mr. Werfel. That is a very good question. I think for one,
the Recovery Act represented a point in time where there was
tremendous accountability, both vertically and horizontally,
across Government and recipients, about getting the information
reported in and getting it correct. There was leadership
engagement, congressional oversight, GAO has probably issued 20
reports auditing and looking at our activities to meet these
requirements. There was a real sense, and I am glad of it, a
real healthy stress that was placed on the entire Federal
environment, and the recipients of the Recovery Act, that this
needed to be done transparently. And it became one of the most
major priorities that I have ever been involved in in order to
make this work, make it successful.
And we had a very talented individual in Earl DeVaney at
the board, at the Recovery Board, helping us along the way. And
the stars aligned for great success. The USAspending.gov
environment, it hasn't been as similar. The law was passed in
2006. We did not see the same type of emphasis, whether it be
GAO, congressional or administration leadership, around getting
those data requirements up and running.
When this administration came in, it was confronted almost
immediately with the economic situation and the Recovery Act.
We immediately looked at this as a major opportunity to deploy
Recovery Act reporting and Recovery.gov successfully, and have
it set the milestone that USAspending.gov would need to follow.
We already see evidence that is following through. Because
up until the Recovery act, we never had any sub-award reporting
in USAspending.gov and now we do. So we are already starting to
see that this arc of, can Recovery Act reporting set a new tone
and a new watermark that would move USAspending.gov in the
right direction, it is already starting to materialize. But we
still have to work at it.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
I would like to recognize the ranking member of this
subcommittee, Mr. Connolly, for his questions in 5 minutes.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chairman, and welcome Mr. Werfel.
Welcome back to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
your second home lately.
Mr. Werfel. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. We are glad to have you.
You, I don't think, had joined us yet, but the chairman,
Mr. Lankford and I, in our respective opening statements, both
praised the administration for the transparency initiative,
especially with respect to Recovery.gov. So I think there was
public acknowledgment, on a bipartisan basis, that we have made
a lot of progress. Now, nothing is perfect.
You in your testimony talked about the OMB and the CFO
counsel developing a new statement of spending to focus on how
and where Federal dollars are being spent. Would that supplant
the current CFS? And how would that work?
Mr. Werfel. It wouldn't supplant it. It gets back to part
of the response to Congressman Cummings' question, how do you,
we have confronted ourselves the following question. How do we
drive more accountability for Federal agencies' reporting of
spending information into USAspending.gov. We feel like we have
developed a pretty strong muscle in the area of basic financial
statement reporting. The agencies have been doing it for years.
They have set up IT systems and processes to do it.
So the question is, how do we walk in that game and talk in
that dialog. That is where the concept of the statement of
spending came. Because agencies have the ability and the
experience, and auditors have the ability and experience, to
audit basic financial statements. We felt that if we can create
a financial statement similar to our other statements that has
the foundational information that goes into USAspending.gov
that you, in order to get a clean audit opinion on that
statement of spend, it would automatically mean that the
underlying source information is accurate and then the
information that flowed into USAspending.gov by definition
therefore would be more reliable.
So what we are saying with the statement of spend is,
reliability of USAspending.gov information into what we believe
has been a successful, yet still emerging initiative to improve
basic financial reporting on things like balance sheets.
Mr. Connolly. Are there best practices from USAspending.gov
that can be applied to other Federal agencies, and if so, how
does OMB disseminate that, or inculcate that?
Mr. Werfel. Absolutely. One of the things that we did when
we started this process of moving forward on a more robust
quality assurance program from USAspending.gov is we asked each
agency to submit a data quality plan. And you can look across
those plans and see some agencies really ahead of the game in
terms of the types of reconciliations that they are doing,
looking at control totals, doing automated reports right out of
their systems. I think Danny Harris, Dr. Harris did a very good
job during his testimony of explaining how much they have
leveraged their transaction infrastructure in a way to make
this make more sense.
But other agencies, not as much. Other agencies are still
doing more manual, what we sometimes call cuff reports, putting
together the reports separately and therefore, it is not as
efficient and it is not as reliable. So one of the basic
missions of my office, the CFO Counsel, is to share this
information across agencies. We have working groups that are
doing that to say, here is what Dr. Harris and the Department
of Education are doing. They have it wired into a process that
is working for them and minimizing errors. And your agency is
not doing as well of a job. So how can we close that gap? So
that is part of the mission here.
Mr. Connolly. Let me ask you, because I am going to run out
of time, one more question. In the category of transparency, at
least speaking to this Member, I don't think we pay enough
attention up here to tax expenditures. That is a real, live
spending item by any other name. We just don't like to talk
about it, but it is a trillion dollars a year.
What is OMB doing to try to make sure that we are shedding
more light on tax expenditures and their relationship to the
Federal deficit and their relationship to other aspects of
Federal spending?
Mr. Werfel. This is an issue that I think, it is going to
be one of those times in the hearing when I ask to come back to
you with more information. I would like to consult with my
colleagues at IRS. It is not currently one of the required
elements, for example, within Recovery Act reporting and
USAspending.gov. So sometimes we are so busy dealing with the
statutory requirements that are before us and meeting all those
deadlines that some of the other elements of transparency don't
get on our radar screen as much.
For me, that is true. My days and nights are spent meeting
the requirements of the various laws before me. So let me, if I
could, consult with IRS and then come back and brief your
subcommittee on this issue.
Mr. Lankford. I yield to the gentleman an additional 3
minutes of time.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chairman. And I really welcome
that, and Mr. Chairman, I would hope that our subcommittee
would welcome that. Because I think if we are going to have
transparency and we are going to have data available to the
public, tax expenditures, if you look at how they are accounted
and how we address them in budget documents and so forth, it is
woefully inadequate. And it is a very substantial amount of
opportunity cost from a revenue point of view. It may be all
good policy, but it deserves the light of day.
So I would welcome your coming back to us in much more
detail.
And let me ask, and I would hope that the chairman would
join me in this, that we would ask also for your
recommendations about how better to capture both the value and
the cost of such expenditures moving forward. And Mr. Chairman,
I would ask whether you might be able to join me in that
request.
Mr. Lankford. Yes, that is a difficult one to track, just
because the IRS Code is nine times longer than the Bible. You
think we have a few exceptions in there? [Laughter.]
Mr. Connolly. Exactly.
Mr. Lankford. Gathering all of that and what the values
include I am sure would be quite a task. I don't know whether
it would be GAO or who that might be to be able to land on and
help us determine those types of things.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much.
Mr. Lankford. You are welcome.
Mr. Connolly. My final point, question, would be, I assume
that both the CTO and the CIO, Mr. Chopra and Mr. Kundra, are
involved in the deployment of technology with your CFO counsel
in trying to aid and disseminate best practices, eliminate
duplication and improve transparency?
Mr. Werfel. Absolutely. It is a partnership. Vivek Kundra,
the Government CIO, could have been sitting here today just as
I am, with the emphasis of this hearing on reliability of
reporting, potentially on issues of audit. It just made more
sense for me to be here. But we are attached at the hip on
these issues.
We have to solve this with a multidisciplinary approach. If
it is just the auditor, just the accountant, not going to get
it done. The technologist is critical to this effort as well.
Mr. Connolly. I think that is a really important point, Mr.
Chairman. With that, I yield back my time and I thank the Chair
for his generosity and consideration.
Mr. Lankford. Thank you.
Mr. Werfel, let me just run through a litany of questions
here, and just short answers, and try to run through a couple
of things on it as we finish this out. Thank you for waiting
through the lunch hour to be able to be here as well, as we
were finishing up the voting.
You had mentioned earlier that there was a need for some
legislation to correct some of the data needs that are out
there. I would like for your office to be able to provide to
our committee that list that you would say, here are the
legislative fixes that we need to be able to help resolve those
things. If you could get that back to us, we will make sure
that we share that in a bipartisan way. And that would be very
helpful to us.
There are a maze of sites that are out there. Recovery.gov
was very well done. It got the information out quickly. It was
so successful that now we have multiplied the dot gov and now
we have Recovery.gov and paymentaccuracy.gov and
Itdashboard.gov and all the agencies have it, Research.gov,
Data.gov, and it goes on and on. I am missing many that I know.
How does an individual go find their information now? We
have moved from, it is out there, go search for it, when
originally the design was, let's lock in a Data.gov,
USAspending.gov and say, if you are looking for something, go
there. Is that still the mission? If so, how is it going?
Mr. Werfel. You are raising an enormously challenging
element of open government and transparency. And there are many
challenging elements to it. One of them is getting the data out
there. And we are trying, and I think making important
progress, in getting more real information and other types of
reports public, in particular through the Web.
Another challenge, and there are numerous, but the other
challenge is, sometimes the quantity of the data that is out
there can be overwhelming, and how are we assisting the
citizenry in accessing that information. And right now, I think
you have hit on something that is part of a strategy. It might
not be the most effective strategy, and it is evolving. But it
is the branding of our Web sites in ways that make sense. If
you want to learn about grants, go to Grants.gov. If you want
to learn about where Federal dollars are going,
USAspending.gov. If you are curious about the Recovery Act,
Recovery.gov. And you see the theme of trying to make it
logical.
And we do a lot of work with citizens and user group around
these efforts to say, what works for you. We don't do these Web
sites in a vacuum.
Mr. Lankford. Correct. But what is the central portal going
to be? If I don't know which one to go to, where do I go to
say, this is where I start?
Mr. Werfel. I don't think that we have established a
consistent central portal. I know that in the previous
administration there was First.gov, there is USA.gov is
available. But I don't think that we have championed the
starting point portal for the rest of Government.
Mr. Lankford. Let me ask you, and obviously I am not going
to order you one way or the other on this, but let me ask you
to examine that. Because people outside of the Beltway do not
know where to go. They do not know if they are looking for food
stamp information to go to the Agriculture Department. They are
not aware that there are education programs in the Department
of Defense. They don't know how to be able to search for those
things.
So they need a central portal to go be able to ask the
questions, if they are going to get the data, then it can take
them to the spot it is going to go. It doesn't have to be all
in one place, it can be these various sites. It does make
sense. There are going to be some watchdog groups that are
always going to land on Research.gov, that is what they
research. That is what they want to go after. Or the
Grants.gov.
But there has to be a place for people to be able to go to
if the information is out there that they know. Otherwise, many
of the things that we talked about earlier, Dr. Harris and
others, it is on their agency Web site. It is not on Data.gov,
it is not on USAspending.gov, it is over on their agency. So I
can't go find it.
Mr. Werfel. So, yes, let me just recommit to the point that
we are working toward that objective. We have, as you
mentioned, some success with the branding in terms of certain
stakeholders who automatically know where to go, and we develop
important partnerships with them. And that efforts are underway
to reconcile the various dot govs. What I would like to do, as
you say, come back, we will show you some of our thoughts on a
strategic vision for that. Then let's partner together toward
the right strategic vision.
Mr. Lankford. Let me bounce a couple of other things past
you. There is a great need, we heard from Agriculture and
Education, that some data standards, if things are going to go
up, here is how they need to go up. And I gave the example
earlier of an address field that includes the entire address,
including State, city, zip code in one field. That is obviously
not searchable. A single entity, that is, a contractor, needs
to have an i.d. number that someone can search for that
contractor and they can chase them down. There is a need for
OMB to be able to provide that to the agencies, here are more
data standards. Even begging the question, what is a
significant piece of data out there.
And the for-instance on that. If someone is going and
looking for how many employees does an agency have, what is
their budget, what are the programs that they are doing, and
what is the mission of those programs, there is no place they
can go to get that. They are stuck searching through an agency
Web site that may or may not have that. That seems to be fairly
usable data that I think most American taxpayers would want to
be able to look at a site, like a Data.gov, like something,
whatever it may be, and to say, how many people work there,
what is the mission of the departments that are there, what are
even the names of the departments that are there, and what is
the budget for that.
To find an established piece on that, if that is something
OMB can begin on, that is something I think we should begin on
as well, to say there is a basic transparency piece that needs
to get out there. Does that seem reasonable to you?
Mr. Werfel. It absolutely does. I think if you looked at
the landscape of data across Government, you are obviously
going to find significant heterogeneity and opportunities for
standardization. You will see some pockets of standardization
that are promising and that we can buildupon. But what you will
also find is a lot of work to be done. We need to move out on a
strategic set of priorities. We have started.
Mr. Lankford. And I will tell you, Ranking Member Connolly
and I have both affirmed that. This is the first administration
to do this level of it. This is the beginning point, we
understand.
The criticism is not that we are starting it. Way to go on
starting it and getting it out there. I want to find out, what
are the lessons learned, what are we missing, what are people
asking for. Let me give you a for instance on it. It would be a
help to this committee that when the emails come back as
feedback, and there are several of your sites that say, for
feedback or contact us for more questions, what data are you
looking for, basically, if our committee were to get those
things in real time at the same time.
Not that we are going to respond to those things, but hat
would allow us in our oversight role to be able to say, you
know what, these are the data pieces people are asking for. And
if our committee could get that unfiltered, and it could be
shared bipartisan, then people could get a chance to say, you
know what, a lot of people seem to be asking for this. Why is
it that we don't provide that? That would allow us to do our
oversight a lot stronger.
And let me make another comment to you. You mentioned
Recovery.gov. That is a very successful site, you are right, it
was very well done, and the information was unprecedented that
was put out. My feeling on it is, one of the successes of it
was the recipients were uploading information. It wasn't just a
Government entity that was putting it down there, they have
lots of other things. But the recipients were saying, yes, we
received this, this is what we received and this is the
feedback for it.
That is of great benefit. Is that something that is going
to continue, and can that be replicated in USAspending.gov and
other places?
Mr. Werfel. Yes, and there are many, many, a lot of the
information that the Federal Government reports today, the
source is the recipient of the Federal dollars reporting what
is going on with the dollars from a financial perspective, a
performance perspective.
What was, I think, unique about the Recovery Act was the
automated nature of it, the speed of it, all of that.
Mr. Lankford. Correct. That is a platform that now exists,
though. What I am asking is, is that a platform that will
continue to be used? Will it be replicated in other areas to
say the recipient can quickly say, yes, we have received this
grant, and also be able to come back and say, this is what was
done with it? Because one of the primary questions that I get a
lot about grants and contracts and other things, was it
actually accomplished? Did we do it? What happened with that?
I think there would be people that could look around their
own neighborhood and could find, this is what happened in my
area, I had no idea that the Federal Government was involved in
this area in positive ways. But they don't know, unless there
is some reporting back on accountability on that.
So that Recovery.gov platform of recipient reporting, is
that something that is going to be multiplied out and used?
Mr. Werfel. It is, and it is ongoing today. We have more
and more modernized and more seamless ways of collecting
information from non-Federal stakeholders. And that is going on
today.
Mr. Lankford. In the USAspending.gov and other places, as
has been referenced by several people, when there are gaps in
it, and information is not showing up, or it is showing up as a
contract is here, or the grant is here, but just zero amount,
how are they held to account in the agencies to get that
information correctly? Whether it be a data field that is not
done, or the dollar amounts are completely left out, is there a
chain of command? Is there someone verifying that and saying,
hey, we have to get this correct?
It seems that 30 some odd percent accuracy rate is not
quite high enough for us.
Mr. Werfel. A couple of responses there. First, as
mentioned earlier in my testimony and mentioned on the first
panel, right now the process is a self-assessment. We have
asked the agencies to create a senior accountable official, and
then an internal process to validate completeness and accuracy.
And there are some limitations in the self-assessment. An
independent eye, whether it is the Inspector General or an
auditor, coming in to review that, is going to drive
improvements and more objectivity and the results will improve.
Second, I want to just, on the record, take a different
perspective on the 30 percent success rate that was in the
testimony of one of the other witnesses from the Sunlight
Foundation. We have concerns with the methodology surrounding
that. And I don't need to go into great detail. But we do not
believe the success rate is as low as the Sunlight Foundation
said.
Mr. Lankford. It is just the key data coming out. I did a
quick search on just for Oklahoma, my home State, and to be
able to look at it and see some of the things that are in
USAspending.gov, and tracking through the different things that
are there. There is just a for instance. Last year there was a
helicopter services contract that was put out, but there is no
amount that is listed on that one. So we don't know what that
one is.
But there is apparently a peanut butter contract for a
little over $2 million. That seems like a large amount of
peanut butter. We go through a lot of it at my house. But on
this particular report, I could go on and on, there are
multiple areas that are zeroed out, page after page, there are
about 17 pages listed, a lot of zeroes that are listed here.
And I don't know if we bought $2 million worth of peanut butter
in Oklahoma or not, from a Government contract.
But there just seem to be some issues that I can look at,
and I can say, OK, somebody needs to be verifying this data and
making sure it is complete, and there needs to be a process. It
is a very good thing to get the data out there. But to get it
out wrong or incomplete raises all sorts of questions.
Mr. Werfel. Absolutely. And as I think was evidenced during
the first panel, some of the criticisms or concerns about the
data have rational explanations and some of them, it is just a
basic data quality issue that we need to address. I think the
more people that are searching this data and using this data
the more we move in the direction of better quality. The fact
that you can go online and find $2 million of Federal dollars
were spent on something related to peanut butter is something
that could not have been done before.
Mr. Lankford. That is correct.
Mr. Werfel. And for that, we want to celebrate that,
leverage it, make sure that we do have a more accountable
government. But as you point out, there are gaps in the
reporting and we are working on closing them.
Mr. Lankford. That is the best gift that we can give, is
transparency. Watchdog groups, outside citizen groups, the
contractors themselves being able to look at the site and say,
was it reported correctly, is that accurate, is a tremendous
asset to them. We want to continue to multiply that and make
sure that does occur.
So with that, Mr. Connolly, did you have additional
questions?
Mr. Connolly. If the chairman would yield, I was just going
to add to your point that it may be a good thing to celebrate
the fact that we can now solve the peanut butter mystery. But
on the other hand, we may want more information. And I would,
because it is not intuitively obvious to the searcher why we
would be spending $2 million tax dollars on peanut butter.
So while we are celebrating the fact that one can access
that piece of data, I would hope that, to the chairman's point,
that we try to make these search engines even more useful by
way of, here is why we are buying $2 million worth of peanut
butter.
Mr. Werfel. Right. And as an example, if I could respond to
that, a legitimate explanation might be, it might be part of
the school lunch program, and therefore, there is an easy
explanation.
Mr. Lankford. I completely agree. And I would say that the
ranking member mentioned in his opening statement that there is
not a need to be able to track every paper clip. That is not
what I think the American people are looking for on it. But I
think it is these broad categories, to know that it is
consistent, we know what that is, the information is getting
out there, it is trackable, it is traceable.
For instance, if a report is done, people want to know, if
there is a report done on wildfires in a certain bird nest, it
asks the obvious question, how much did that cost to do that
report? Well, we know, there was a grant that was given to be
able to do that. We should be attaching that report to the cost
of producing that report so everyone could know and evaluate,
is that good use of taxpayer dollars, and instruct the
conversation. That is a good thing for us as legislators, to be
able to look at and be able to see, and for people in our
districts to hold us to account on that. That is a good thing
for us to hold you to account, to say we need that information
to get out there for reports done, how much does it cost, can
they find it and be able to track it is a reasonable thing.
If there are no additional questions, Mr. Werfel, thank you
very much for being here. We have a great deal to do. We look
forward to your followup reports on it, and this hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]