House opens up expenditure reports

In case you didn't catch the Twitter update this morning, the House has released its quarterly Statement of Disbursements (SOD) report and — for the first time ever — they're in an electronic format.

The SOD report was previously only available as bound paper volumes from the Longworth House Office Building.

The 3,000+ page report is quite extensive. Check out the full reports for a detailed look, but here are the quarterly amounts of Nevada's representatives:

• Shelley Berkley spent $347,300.57
• Dean Heller spent $314,842.41
• Dina Titus spent $293,922.02
• The entire delegation spent $956,056

While the House should have gone the extra mile and released these in a more machine-readable format (e.g. spreadsheets), I'm glad to see House leadership follow through on their promise.

I'm hoping to eventually import these records into TransparentNevada and make them searchable. Stay tuned.

Declassified documents to remain secret

Despite pronouncements of increased openness and government transparency, President Obama appears ready to miss a December 31st deadline for releasing millions of pages of military and intelligence documents.

Dating from WWII to the early 1980s, the documents "cover the gamut of foreign relations, intelligence activities, and military operations - with the exception of nuclear weapons data, which remain protected by Congress."

The reason for the delay? Recalcitrant spy agencies are unwilling to conform:

Some of the agencies have thrown up roadblocks to disclosure, engaged in turf battles over how documents should be evaluated, and have reviewed only a fraction of the material to determine whether releasing them would jeopardize national security.

In 1995 President Clinton first initiated the release of these documents, although President Bush amended it in 2003.

In anticipation of the missed deadline, President Obama has promised the agencies an extension past the deadline of an undetermined length.

Both the President and the agencies involved share some of blame for this. The President should not be giving open-ended extensions unless a good faith effort to clear the backlog is being made. Likewise, the spy agencies must realize that they are answerable to the people and the work done generations ago deserves to be open for all to see.

Releasing these documents is an important check on the power these agencies have and is a way America separates itself from third world dictatorships. Let's hope these agencies meet this requirement soon.

The dismal state of Data.gov

While Recovery.gov has gotten most of the attention (and blame) in the White House's push for increased governmental transparency, don't forget the lower profile efforts at Data.gov

The Sunlight Foundation has reviewed Data.gov and their findings are not encouraging.

Despite Vivek Kundra's May 2009 claim that there would be "hundreds of thousands" of data feeds in the coming months, we are half-way through November and the site currently boasts a paltry 600.

The most prominent data sets are the "toxics release inventories" broken down by state. They currently comprise 293 of the 600 data sets made available on the site.

Curious to see what is contained in them, I searched for "Nevada" and was presented with six results. Even though the site claims the data is available in a spreadsheet-compatible format, clicking on it presents you with an executable file that must be unzipped. Why not just give me a file I can open directly in a spreadsheet? Why make me jump through this hoop?

Also make sure to check out the comments posted on the Sunlight blog post. The first one is especially enlightening.

Why not 'big brother' Big Brother?

So asks the Congressman:

A call for transparency in the federal government was floated Friday -- not by President Barak Obama, who promised the most transparent administration in history -- but by a Republican member of Congress. Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) made the call during Friday’s meeting of the House Committee on Rules.

The committee – which crafted the rules that shaped the debate and vote on the House Democrats’ health care bill this weekend – meets in one of the smaller rooms in the Capitol.

“There’s a reason you all meet in the crowded little room on the third floor – to keep people out,” Dreier, the committee's ranking member, said he has heard about the usually camera-free committee meeting...

During the meeting, Dreier suggested to Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) that the chairwoman should ask that cameras be permanently installed in the room. Dreier said it would provide “an opportunity for the American people to see what takes place in this committee.”

Kind of a Big Brother for Big Brother.

As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

I love this idea.

A Recovery.gov Review

Have you ever wished for a guide to help you understand all the information on Recovery.gov? ProPublica has exactly what you're looking for with a guide that reviews six broad areas of stimulus spending.

For jobs, it gives insight on how the number of jobs "created or saved" is calculated. Instead of using a straight headcount, it uses "full-time equivalents." As explained by ProPublica, "The White House instructed recipients to measure the number of hours worked on stimulus projects and divide it by the number of hours in a full-time schedule for the quarter. So a construction worker on a one-month paving project would count only as a third of a job."

Measuring how effectively the money has been disbursed ran into problems because spending isn't tracked down to the county level. Not having this information makes it tough for researchers to know how or if the money lowered unemployment.

In terms of transparency, Recovery.gov has struggled with getting accurate data. The guide continues, "On Oct. 15, for the first batch of data, Recovery.gov listed Sanofi Pasteur, a French vaccine manufacturer, with the largest stimulus contract, worth $1.4 billion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the amount should have been $10.4 million." While the error was corrected, there is no doubt other incongruities hidden elsewhere in the site.

There is also some waste and abuse. Money going to airports with less than one flight an hour, lion and tiger dens, and mascot costumes are all included. In addition, nearly $30 million has gone to companies under criminal investigation.

Kudos to ProPublica for putting the guide together. I hope you'll find it as helpful as I did.