Coburn: The Law's the Law

In conjunction with the release of agency plans intended to ingrain transparency into departmental activities, the White House on Wednesday released several policies aimed at accelerating those efforts. The new policies and the open government plans were released on Wednesday pursuant to an open government directive issued in December.

The Office of Management and Budget clarified existing rules to remove barriers to online outreach, directed agencies to make it easier for citizens to find regulations on the Web and ordered agencies to report spending information on subcontracts by October.

The financial rules direct agencies to submit spending information on recipients of federal subcontracts and subgrants data for publication on the Web. Starting shortly after Oct. 1, the spending details will be published on USASpending.gov, a site authorized by Congress in 2006 to track all federal awards, but it hasn't lived up to its mandate. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who co-sponsored the legislation with then-Sen. Obama, chastised the White House at a Senate hearing last month for moving ahead on its open government agenda, while failing to implement the subrecipient component of the law. Directives, including the open government document, do not carry the force of law.

USASpending initially launched December 2007 with data on only primary recipients of federal funding. That was more than a year after the law was enacted. Agencies will have half that time to procure and publish the more hard-to-find data on secondary recipients, under Wednesday's guidance. In addition, according to the new rules, agencies must start measuring the accuracy and completeness of spending data. USASpending.gov will undergo an upgrade later this spring that will expand the site's scalability to accommodate the new data and allow the public to download raw data sets.

"We understand that it is difficult to collect and accurately report subaward data, but that does not change the fact that it is a requirement of law. The administration is making progress but taxpayers are still not receiving the information they deserve," Coburn spokesman John Hart said in response to the new policy.

Separate regulations issued on Wednesday should enable easier tracking of the rulemaking process. The guidance directs agencies to tag each of their proposals with an identification number. Currently, proposals are hard to find online because they change names as they proceed from the preliminary rulemaking phase to the issuance of a final rule.