Obama says he would use IT to open government

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., laid out a government reform agenda on Monday that calls for a heavy reliance on information technology to create a more efficient government and to make public the inner workings of agencies and the White House.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Faced with a record federal deficit and $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, the Democratic nominee for president pledged to "use technology and lessons from the private sector to improve efficiency across every level of government -- because we cannot meet 21st century challenges with a 20th century bureaucracy."

As promised earlier, Obama said he would appoint a federal chief technology officer "to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century." The CTO would meet with agencies to make sure they were using the best technologies and best practices. "Like he has in the campaign, Obama will employ innovative technologies, including blogs, wikis, social networking tools and other new strategies, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing," according to a plan released on Monday.

Much of Obama's reform plan focused on using technology to make public how government works so Americans can become more involved in the process of governing. In the plan, Obama says he "will require his appointees who lead the executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. Videos of meetings will be archived on the Web, and the transcript will be available to the public. Obama will also require his appointees to commit to employ all the technological tools available to allow average citizens not just to observe, but to participate and be heard on the issues that affect their daily lives. Obama will require Cabinet officials to have periodic 21st century fireside chats, restore meaning to the Freedom of Information Act, and conduct regulatory agency business in public."

Part of the increased transparency will be to make government spending data easier for the public to access. Obama says he will build off the current USASpending.gov Web site, which includes grants and contracts, to include copies of contracts, contractor performance, violations of laws or regulations and the request for proposals process.

The Office of Management and Budget also will be part of promoting transparency by posting tax breaks for corporations on its Web site and non-emergency bills Congress has passed on the White House Web site for five days before they are signed into law.

Finally, Obama would make available on the Office of Governmental Ethics Web site the records of waivers granted from conflicts of interest and personal financial statements for political appointees and the career histories of senior executive staff, along with a searchable database of lobbying contacts between registered lobbyists and political appointees.

"When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it," he said to a crowd in Green Bay, Wis., on Monday. "When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency, we will put as many as possible online for every American to watch. When there is a tax bill being debated in Congress, you will know the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get. And we will put every corporate tax break and every pork-barrel project online for every American to see. You will know who asked for them and you can cast your vote accordingly."

Obama also took on the problem of failed government programs, most of which are IT related., saying, "The federal government's ability to manage contracts has not kept up with the increase in the volume and complexity of federal contracts." He cited the Coast Guard's Deepwater program to replace its ships and airplanes with high-tech fleets, the Department of Homeland Security's virtual fence along the Southern border and its U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program.

He said he would hire more contract managers and improve their training, and require agencies to perform audits of 25 percent of the largest contracts each year, focusing on noncompetitive and cost-plus contracts first. "The audit will verify performance and cost savings, as well as whether the work was appropriate for contracting out, the competition was done fairly, and the contractor treated its workers appropriately."

Left out of the plan was any mention of a chief information security officer, which Obama had pledged this summer in an effort to make federal networks more secure. Obama said the cyber chief would report directly to the president.