All Things Reform: administration

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Recovery information on government web sites so far meet with mixed results

Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: OMB Watch

Recovery Transparency Meets Mixed Results

Three weeks after President Barack Obama signed into law the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), states have begun to see federal economic stimulus funds move within their borders. Behind the hundreds of billions of dollars soon to follow are some 25 federal departments, agencies, and administrations that are in charge of allocating the funds. In addition to this unprecedented level of emergency spending is a pledge by Obama to "watch the taxpayers' money with more rigor and transparency than ever." The speed at which the administration and some federal agencies have moved is impressive, even as there has been uneven implementation of transparency efforts.

Spending data on Recovery.gov, the new website established to monitor how the Recovery Act is being implemented, is organized haphazardly. To find information on Medicaid disbursements, for example, one must comb through a list of press releases to find a link to that spending. The Recovery.gov website links to the Recovery Act legislative text and contains a breakdown of the act's spending provisions by spending area (e.g. health, transportation, tax cuts, etc.), but the website does not – perhaps cannot yet, given the short time frame of its implementation – contain a listing of all federal Recovery Act programs with their attendant funding levels and state allocations. This fact, however, is mitigated by information provided by federal agency Recovery Act websites – a list of which is available on Recovery.gov.

When the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidelines to the federal agencies on Recovery Act spending, it mandated that they establish on their own websites a specific and easy-to-find area to detail Recovery Act spending. These Recovery Act sections of agency websites are all located by adding "/recovery" after the agency's web address. For example, the Department of Transportation's Recovery site is located at "www.dot.gov/recovery." The Recovery Act and subsequent instructions to create agency websites are only weeks old, but some agencies have moved adroitly and are providing organized, detailed information. Other agencies have not done so.

[...]

The level of transparency envisioned by the administration is ambitious, and with a law that is barely three weeks old, missteps and less than one hundred percent compliance is to be expected. Tracking Recovery Act spending at the program level, however, is only one challenge the Obama administration faces when it comes to spending accountability. As Recovery Act funds are disbursed to the states through contractors and subcontractors (and grantees and subgrantees), a sophisticated system of data reporting gathering will be required. In an effort to assist the administration in developing such a system, the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR), co-chaired by OMB Watch and Good Jobs First, has put forth its recommendations for a Recovery Act data collection and reporting system in a memorandum, "Interim Recovery.gov Data Reporting Architecture." It is certain that a series of iterations will be necessary to refine such a model to achieve the transparency articulated by the Obama administration, and as such, the CAR coalition will continue to solicit feedback from stakeholders and the administration to that end.

( 03/10/09)

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Major report- Broken Government on the George W. Bush adminstration's watch

Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: Center for Public Integrity

Dear Friend,

As the Bush administration comes to an end, the federal government is not functioning as it should. Just how bad is this government dysfunction? In an effort to answer that question, the Center for Public Integrity embarked on Broken Government, an examination of the worst systematic failures of the executive branch over the past eight years.

Broken Government documents more than 125 examples of government breakdown in areas as diverse as education, energy, the environment, justice and security, the military and veterans affairs, health care, transportation, financial management, consumer and worker safety, and more — failures which adversely affected ordinary people and made the nation a less open or less secure place to live.

Click here to read more from our latest investigation.

Want to read more about these widespread failures and how they affect you? Here’s what you can do to learn more:

Visit the website to search our database of government failures by category, agency, or view a full list;
Suggest additional failures so we can continue this project in January 2009, as well as begin the process of holding the new administration accountable;
Pass it on - let others know that Broken Government is now available online;
Make a contribution to support this project and help us continue our critical work!

This is just the first step of this groundbreaking project. Keep an eye out for more information from the Center for Public Integrity as we continue our investigation throughout 2009 into what it will take to repair and renew the nation’s government.

Thanks for your support.

Bill Buzenberg
Executive Director

Monday, September 01, 2008

Survey of Swing State County Clerks, from FairVote

Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: FairVote

Survey of Swing State County Clerks

The Democracy SOS Project is aimed to increase transparency in election administration and monitor actions of election officials, starting with Secretaries of State. The following reports are a compilation of the results of surveying county clerks in 10 “swing states” during the 2008 Presidential Election. FairVote staff and interns surveyed nearly every county clerk in Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado and Pennsylvania, as well as election officials in counties with at least 500,000 residents in Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin. We asked questions designed to shed light on the practices of the county, as well as their interpretation and compliance with state law.

Uniformity in Election Administration:
A 2008 Survey of Swing State County Clerks

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