Open Data/Transparency
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A signature open-government initiative of the Obama administration is turning five years old this week. The website Data.gov is home to more than 100,000 individual agency data sets. It's also the destination of app developers hoping to turn federal data into useful information. Marion Royal is the director of Data.gov, which is run by the General Services Administration. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss how the website has progressed over the years.
May 19, 2014 -
The White House released a U.S. Open Data Action Plan Friday, which comes exactly one year after the President signed an executive order to make government data open and machine-readable.
May 13, 2014 -
The DATA Act is the nation's first legislative mandate for data transparency in nearly five years. It will have a huge impact on financial and performance data. It requires the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget to transform federal spending from disconnected documents into open, standardized data, and to publish that data online. Hudson Hollister, executive director of the Data Transparency Coalition, spoke to Executive Editor Jason Miller at the 2014 Government Performance Summit.
May 06, 2014 -
The measure that will shed light on federal spending data is expected to sail through the House when Congress returns from recess. A version of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act cleared the Senate last week and brought transparency advocates a step closer to governmentwide financial data standards. Hudson Hollister, executive director of the Data Transparency Coalition, explained differences between the House and Senate versions of the DATA Act to Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp.
April 15, 2014 -
GSA, NASA and NIH are providing agency customers more insight into what they are buying, how they are buying it and what prices they are paying. OFPP plans to launch the Prices Paid Portal later this year. But others say it's not about the data, but the outcomes agencies are trying to achieve.
March 21, 2014 -
The FOIA Act of 2014 would amend the Freedom of Information Act in 12 ways. It calls for the online portal and requires more oversight by agency inspectors general. But some agency FOIA officers say the bill only would improve the information disclosure process minimally.
March 19, 2014 -
The Center for Effective Government evaluated how well the 15 agencies that receive 90 percent of all Freedom of Information Act requests from the public process those requests. It found most of those agencies receive poor or failing grades in how they are implementing FOIA.
March 10, 2014 -
A new memo from CTO Todd Park requires agencies to update their open government plans by June 1. The plans should include new efforts as well as progress reports on current initiatives.
March 03, 2014 -
OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell sent a memo to agency leaders outlining six steps they must take to make administrative information about everything from grantees to contractors to anything that is collected for the purpose of carrying out the basic administration of a program, such as processing benefit applications or tracking services received, more available internally and externally.
February 24, 2014 -
The Office of Management and Budget's markup of the Senate's version of the bill changes language around requiring data standards and how the information should be published. Open government advocates are concerned about OMB's suggestions.
January 27, 2014 -
Margie Graves, the co-chairwoman of the Innovation Committee and deputy CIO at the Homeland Security Department, said the committee is focusing on three areas: Open data, data analytical tools and public-private partnerships to help agencies improve mission outcomes. December 26, 2013
December 26, 2013 -
With the launch of VA Open Data, members of the public and applications developers will be able to access non-sensitive, non-personal information from the Veterans Affairs Department.
December 24, 2013 -
Margie Graves, the co-chairwoman of the Innovation Committee and deputy CIO at the Homeland Security Department, said the committee is focusing on three areas: Open data, data analytical tools and public-private partnerships to help agencies improve mission outcomes. November 21, 2013
November 21, 2013 -
A new Government Accountability Office report says greater transparency in the way the General Services Administration handles its high-value leases would lead to better decision making and generate more cost savings.
October 25, 2013 -
Despite progress by some agencies in processing FOIA requests, Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org says its difficult to measure how open the government really is.
October 23, 2013
