DATA Act

The 2014 DATA Act set a new standard for government transparency by raising the bar for how much spending data agencies have to make available via public websites. But releasing more information doesn’t help much if the data is unreliable.

Chief data officers are one of the several new “chiefs” to arise in the government bureaucracy over the last decade. Relationship building with program agencies is their greatest challenge, and opportunity.

In the last couple of weeks, GAO has reissued reminders on open recommendations. It’s a long list.

Federal inspectors general are finishing up the testing of their agencies’ compliance with the Data Act. It’s one of three audits required under the 2014 law. But the Council of Inspectors General changed the audit methodology between the current exercise and the one they did two years ago.

The DATA Act requires federal agencies to report spending data in specified formats, all in service of greater financial transparency.

In today’s Federal Newscast, Open Season is underway and the Office of Personnel Management says it has updated its tool for participants to compare plans.

In today’s Federal Newscast, Virginia’s two senators want to know why Defense Secretary Mark Esper is conducting his own examination of DoD’s upcoming JEDI Cloud contract.

Also in today’s Federal Newscast, USDA is facing more congressional backlash for its plans to relocate two research bureaus to Kansas City, and the DoD Inspector General says former Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White misused her subordinates’ time.

In today’s Federal Newscast, the Veterans Affairs Department’s inspector general released its review of the agency’s implementation of the new Forever GI bill.

The Data Act implementation is a work in progress for federal agencies, which have until 2022 to make spending data automatically available to anyone who wants to see it.