our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have the right to know what they get from their government we will work tirelessly and in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to the american people and bring genuine reform to federal bureaucracy this is the mission  and other transparency related initiatives president obama while in the senate joined senator coburn in shepherding the passage of the federal funding accountability and transparency act this act required the administration to create a single searchable website accessible government use available technologies to meet the publics right to know how their tax dollars are being spent unfortunately despite a number of expensive makeovers usaspending gov still fails to achieve the total goal at three years after its launch because of some well known data quality issues that will discuss i am sure as we go through data from usaspending gov comes from two sources one that collects information from federal agencies on contract expenditures and one that collects information from federal agencies on grants loans and other spending gao has reported that these two data sources are riddled errors largely due to human error and a lack of agency oversight over its data submissions the administrations data gov initiative is similar to usaspending gov it is a commendable area and one that in principle i agree with wholeheartedly the federal government collects and generates enormous amount of data that is largely invisible to the american citizen but was paid for by the american citizen this data is also invisible to the reporter or watchdog group that is trying to hold the government accountable or the entrepreneur who might be able to take that data and create new products services or jobs in ways never contemplated by bureaucracy unfortunately the implementation of data gov has not matched its promise the administration required agencies to publish at least three high value data sets that had not previously been published there was little guidance however as to what constitute a high value data s as the sunlight foundations director has said of this the government has some pretty interesting ideas about what they regard as high value data the department of the interior seems to think that the population count of wild horses and burros is a high value but records of safety violations is not we want to see data that can be used to hold the government and entities that report to it accountable data about spending department missions and personnel are noticeably absent from data gov if this data was public it would save time expenses as groups request basic reports and data from their government this is highlighted by an article in politico yesterday detailing how a watchdog group has been requesting long term budget projections from omb that were available in previous years but they are now being withheld in addition to data quality and data value i hope to discuss with our witnesses today the issue of data standards and interoperability among federal data systems if a taxpayer wants to look at how much an agency plans to spend on a particular program from and how much congress ultimately appropriates and then interoperable not only do they lack a common data standard they sometimes violate even the most basic data standards in areas like separating the state field from the address field to allow for easy searches i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and hope that we can begin a fruitful discussion of what usaspending gov this is the first administration to make this kind of data available and the first attempt will always have some errors it is not our intent today to belittle the efforts of this administration only to discover the important lessons learned and to hear the steps that are being taken administration too often oversight focuses only on failures when our role should be to rectify failures while publicizing and encouraging the dissemination of best practices in the case of federal transparency and technology consider where we were fo short years ago there was no centralized site for citizens to read about federal spending projects in the congressional district or summaries of investments for major bills like the recovery act today citizens can access comprehensive federal spending information usaspending gov as a result of house rules adopted under the previous congress all earmarked requests have also been posted on each members website for each of the last two years finally thanks to recovery gov all recovery act investments have been readily accessible to anyone with an internet access these reforms have been a collaborative effort then senator obama and senator coburn wrote legislation to consolidate information on federal spending the result of which was investments finally non governmental organizations have monitored the accuracy of those reporting instruments and their efforts have identified the suggested ways to improve the reliability of the reported data as we continue to expand these transparency initiatives i believe we should demand that we are receiving the greatest possible utility for these programs resources dedicated to reporting should lead to greater public understanding and promote accountability as the government works toward achieving transparency goals we need to consider any that greater reporting costs may have on the infrastructure and educational investments this country needs during this period of budget uncertainty these potential tradeoffs are real considerations that i hope all of our witnesses today will also address another question is how we report and consider the benefits of federal spending programs it is important for our constituents to understand what they are getting from a federal investment as it is to understand how much money is being spent because not all spending is the same not all spending has the same impact on the quality of life or on the economy in addition as we consider the results of different expenditures it is important to treat all federal expenditures in form in reality these are simply spending and policy programs administered by the irs of course many tax expenditures have a valid purpose but as a whole they do not receive the same scrutiny as direct expenditures even though they have the same impact on the federal budget they are not listed on usaspending gov and they are not subject to the accountability mechanisms that apply to other forms of spending the fiscal commission recommended that congress carefully consider the impact of tax expenditures on the budget i believe that this committee should look into those opportunities to make sure these irs administered spending programs are working for all americans and not just those receiving the tax break i look forward to working with members of the subcommittee and with  day basis obviously deals with the events the failures in government and the need for reform short term today like every other hearing that is about oversight transparency and getting it right particularly in data reporting we are dealing with what is ultimately going to be the fix i came from the private sector where the idea that there would be data entry errors and that those data entry errors would be different than the actual payments was  ard of if someone is typing in something for a report rather than taking the actual data as it went out on a purchase order an invoice or some other disbursement then by definition you are not giving people the honest results of what government did you are giving them somebodys interpretation of the honest result if they are completely accurate then all you have wasted is a huge amount of human capital if they are inaccurate then you have data which is worthless today i am very proud that i have a panel of four here both government and very responsible people within the watchdog community to talk about transparency to talk about reporting and to continue with our process of getting it right in the future i regret we have a second panel we have a second panel for an inexplicable reason that omb has told us that they will not sit with non government entities that they have a longstanding policy i ha been here only going on eleven years but it is not that long a policy i would hope that in the future we can have the responsible people who are in the data use business and the data transparency business as often as possible when appropriate and vetted with the government people who are charged with working to do that todays hearing is not the first and it wont be the last in this process until every dollar from the time it leaves the taxpayers account or for that matter the dollar deposited when you want to go into a federal park until the last dollar is spent or disbursed either used to pay a federal employee or disbursed through the system in the private sector until that is accounted from womb to tomb we will not have done our job when we get to that point then the job that we all want done which is full accountability with virtually no loss theft or waste will be possible today it is not possible this hearing is important because the failure to get the data right is the reason that ultimately we not getting the responsible government and day after day we are told one hundred dollars billion two hundred dollars billion three hundred dollars billion would be saved if we simply stopped disbursements to people or to entities which do not deserve them so until we get there this committee will have no more important issue than the one we are here about today this is a subcommittee hearing but you have both of the chairs and ranking members for the reason that the work you are doing is the most important work of the congress thank you  of what has been said it is true that you play a very important role right now we are in a big struggle here in the congress just this morning i had to explain and we were losing students even with the pell grants as they are but when they get slashed it gets works then i thought about as i was just sitting here  hall meeting i had on saturday where people came up to me and said we have two hundred and fifty kids in head start but we have seven hundred and fifty on the waiting list and so what does that have to do with all of this it is about accountability i agree with chairman issa that we need to account for every single dime if money is not being accounted for there is a major problem and that is a sad situation particularly in a country where we can send folks to the moon but we cant keep up with where the money is going that is a major problem so i am grateful for this opportunity to examine the administrations ongoing efforts to bring increase  so we owe it to them to get it right the passage of the federal funding accountability and transparency act of two thousand and six and the establishment of usaspending gov as required by the act have given the average american unprecedented ability to track federal contracts and grants this transparency increases the publics ability to hold elected representatives and federal government accountable specific types of spending including recovery gov and data gov the administrations ongoing efforts to improve the quality and breadth of data being reported are to be commended in shows that there is an opportunity to continue improving transparency and make additional information publicly available in other words we could always do better during the last congress i supported legislation that moved through imposes real financial costs both in dollars and manpower and such costs must be weighed against the benefits they will yield i look forward to the witnesses views on the issues today and finally let me say this any accounting of costs of government spending is inherently incomplete unless it also includes data detailing the revenue loss to the government through tax breaks and incentives to the wealthiest individuals and businesses including businesses that move jobs overseas as children will be thrown out of head start or never get a head start and as young people are thrown out of colleges i look forward to the testimony of our witnesses and to working with chairman lankford and certainly chairman issa and ranking member public campaign and a nationally recognized expert on transparency and the influence of money in politics thank you for being here mister chris smith is the chief information officer for the department of education mister smith previously served as the chief information officer for rural development and the u s department of education and as the several published scholarly articles and a contributor to the technology liberation front a leading tech policy blog he is also the creator of unclutter a popular blog about personal organization and simple living that is read by a quarter million people each month that is a nice reading  list let me give you the ground rules for our hearing itself here each of you has been asked to submit a written statement for the record we have also asked you to prepare an oral statement no longer than five minutes we will allow time for questioning on your statement after that you will see on your desk a series of lights and a clock which will count down f five minutes the lights will change from green to yellow to red when your time is expired and it will be time at that point to quickly wrap up after all the panel has given their oral statements each member present will have five minute to ask questions of the panel many members may have several questions so it is very things going on there right now your testimony will be recorded and it will be available for review by all of us i can assure you it is written down every bit of it and we will be able to review it in days to come so thank you each member completely chooses the content of their five minutes of questioning i would ask the members to h miller thank you chairman lankford ranking member connolly and mister cummings and members of the committee thank you for the invitation to appear before you today my name is ellen miller and i am co founder and executive of the sunlight foundation a non partisan non profit dedicated to using the power of the internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency we take our inspiration from justice brandeis famous adage sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants the public has a right to know how its government works recent congresses deserve congratulations for taking concrete steps toward embracing a st century vision of transparency initiatives from this administration like the open government directive are emblematic of the willingness to take transparency seriously unfortunately the open government directives value has proven to largely aspirational while establishing positive transparency norms is hugely important we believe that government must now focus on the harder challenges it is no longer enough to acknowledge transparencys importance transparency initiatives must be accurate complete and useful as well as timely there is perhaps no better example of the tension between show and tell than usaspending gov disclosure of the ways in which the publics money is spent is among the most important types of government transparency congress recognized this in two thousand and six with the passage of the federal funding accountability and transparency act which required that information about federal grants contracts loans and insurance be placed online in a searchable website known as usaspending gov in the course of their work sunlight researchers have become deeply familiar with the data powering usaspending gov as we began to examine these systems we were aware that the quality of the data sets was widely considered problematic our work quickly confirmed that data suffered from irregularities however we were anxious to reach an even more complete understanding of the problem so we dug in in order to do so we needed a reference point against which we could compare the usaspending gov data unfortunately the complexities of the federal budget make both the budget and treasury expenditure data unsuitable for that use we found our yardstick in the catalog of federal domestic assistance an index of many federal programs including program descriptions and yearly obligation amounts although not strictly designed for this use cfda has been used for comparative analysis by gao in the past we took their methodology and expanded it like gao we looked for mismatches in amounts between cfda and usaspending gov data allowing a generous margin of error to account for differences in the systems we also looked for instances in which reports had been made within statutory deadlines and for incomplete reports finally we automated gaos sample based methodology so that we could examine the entire data base which consists of hundreds of thousands of records the results were sobering we found over one dollar twenty cents trillion of mis reported spending in two thousand and nine alone some of the most serious problems appeared to be caused by the agencys failure to gov the maritime administration has never reported spending associated with any of its loan or insurance programs and reports only a fraction of its grant activity these are just two examples almost every agency has one or programs that failed to report their spending and the spending that is reported is often incomplete or incorrect for example each loan record is required to include both a subsidy cost and the face value of the loan unfortunately the subsidy cost is incorrectly reported as zero for over eighty five percent of the loan records and the face value of all fiscal year two thousand and ten student loans was reported as six dollars ninety cents trillion  an amount greater than the entire federal budget clearly that number is wrong we do not believe that these problems are the fault of the usaspending gov website or the people that maintain it indeed usaspending deserves praise for its growth and improvement when we conducted this analysis we had to send a hard drive out to maryland to get the data today we can download it directly from the website similarly we are pleased to see the administration finally begin to offer the sub maintained by ffata but these improvements will be meaningless for the vast majority of users if the underlying data is not reliable agencies typically use purpose built internal systems for managing their spending that are separate from the public reporting systems and much more accurate in essence they maintain two sets of books one of which is habitually neglected but this latter system is vitally important for both the public and government planning efforts and until the agencies begin to take these responsibilities more seriously federal spending transparency will remain an unfulfilled promise we welcome the committees attention to this issue and encourage you to continue to spend time in engaging oversight and legislative efforts on position i have had the privilege to hold since october two thousand and eight i am very pleased to discuss the departments transparency efforts specific to the open government initiative on his first day in office the president sent a memo directing all federal agencies to create unprecedented levels of openness in government the department of education has taken this directive very seriously our open government plan makes our efforts more transparent participatory and collaborative i am personally committed to these goals and the department looks forward to building upon the solid foundation put in place during the first two years of this initiative for decades the department has collected analyzed and used data to inform our delivery of services at the department of education we collect data about the overall condition and effectiveness of education provided by the states local educational agencies and institutions of higher education a key part of our mission is to provide useful information to states assisting their efforts to allocate resources to education citizens in the most effective and efficient way equally important to our mission is supporting the use of federal resources toward ensuring fair access to education for all open government efforts place special emphasis on providing information to the public leading to increased transparency and to the information we and states use for decision making at the department of education we have established a cross functional team to develop our open government plan which is available on our website also we have established a governing body to oversee departmental execution of the open government plan and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of all of the information collection and dissemination activities at the department decisions and recommendations from this board will and do affect it spending this coordinated effort will effectively manage duplicative data requests it will reduce burdens to the states and local agencies and it will optimize department wide data aggregation at the end of the day is not just about the data that we deliver it is about delivering tools to drive innovation prior to implementing open government efforts we provided similar information and tool sets allowing citizens to view the information in ways that we thought were useful open government altered this framework and now we deliver the same information in a raw machine readable format allowing citizens to analyze the data and transform those data into useful aggregated information this access to data has undoubtedly created new insi views enabling previously unthought of ways for citizens to understand view and track federal dollars the clear benefit is that citizens can now view the delivery of services with comprehensive information and the publics ability to access and analyze these data make federal spending transparent in turn this helps ensure departments are accountable for results and outcomes the challenge for the department is to ensure the quality of this data we view key attributes of quality as timeliness accuracy and most of all privacy the challenge for our stakeholders is to establish proper awareness and context for these data we have already seen positive outcomes as a result of these initiatives for example  race to the top program we provided a detailed description of the process used to review and select the winners of that program the department in implementing race to the top has demonstrated unprecedented transparency by posting all of the applications as well as peer reviewer scores and comments to the public for review to help spur innovation our investing in innovation team created an open innovation portal a website where education innovators can share ideas and collaboration where funders and educators can point out their needs and where people can gather to propose develop fund implement and more than anything else improve solutions inside and outside of the classroom we take the commitment to transparency seriously at all levels within the department for example in two thousand and nine secretary duncan launched his listening and learning tour he did this to engage the public directly in discussing education reform in america the department used the input we received to prepare a blueprint reauthoring the elementary and secondary education act transparency through technology provides an opportunity to engage with the public in making the department of education more accountable specifically the department has a significant role in complying with the federal funding and accountability transparency act due to the very large number of grants contracts and loans that we administer these funds go to numerous recipients and sub recipients in states and territories and the public should know where these funds are going for what purpose and most importantly what results they should expect we submit grant and loan funding transactions on a bi weekly basis from our grant system in the federal assistance award data system file layout additionally we provide our contract funding transactions to the federal procurement data system in real time during our contract award both our grants and contract systems are integrated with the departments general ledger this ensures that the transactions that we submit to usaspending gov are directly  traceable to our financial systems finally the privacy act and federal guidelines govern how we protect personally identifiable information while at the same time complying with the transparency act and other public reporting requirements in conclusion i believe that open government usaspending gov federal reporting and other recovery websites all work together to put more and better information in the hands of the public the benefits are tremendous because these efforts lead to increased accountability transparency and more than anything else recognizable links between spending and results thank you chairman and members of the subcommittee for your attention to this important issue i would be happy to answer any questions you may have  members of the subcommittee chairman issa who was with us here earlier thank you for this opportunity to share with you our progress on the implementation of the open government initiatives transparency and accountability in the use of information technology to further these important goals i am joined today by my colleague jo holladay who is the usda acting chief financial officer just behind me usda programs touch every american and many others around the world every day we are focused on the activities that ensure an economically thriving rural america that we are conserving our national forests and private working lands and promoting sustainable agricultural production and biotechnology exports to ensure and increase food security and to provide access to a nutritious diet for all americans full and easy access to information on government spending promotes accountability by allowing detailed tracking analysis of deployment of these resources tracking and analysis allows the public and public officials to gauge the effectiveness of expenditures and to monitor spending patterns to achieve the best possible results transparency also gives the public confidence that we are properly managing its funds from the transparency act of two thousand and six to the open gov directive of two thousand and nine government transparency has become the cornerstone for information access to facilitate participation and collaboration across federal state and local governments and with the public usda is a strong advocate of government transparency and is striving to meet both the letter and intent of the open government directive on december th of two thousand and nine the white house issued the open government directive requiring federal agencies to take specific action to promote transparency collaboration and participation the open government directive puts accountability and accessibility at the center of how federal government operates it instructs agencies to share information with the public through online open and accessible and as my colleague has stated machine readable formats usda fully supports the administrations directive public participation and collaboration into its activities with the launch of our website citizens are able to learn about and comment on usda information and post their ideas on transparency and collaboration and actively participate with the department the public can also post ideas to help usda become more efficient and more effective in everything that we do additionally to improve outreach initiatives usda has established an open government communication plan which describes usdas interaction and collaboration and details the activities that we are taking private sector and the public the applications for healthy kids competition was a collaborative project to challenge the general public to design online mobile gaming tools and educational applications to educate people about the importance of healthy eating and physical activity usdas food and nutrition service department of health and human services first lady michelle obamas lets move initiative and the nfls fuel up to play sixty played a vital role in this challenge over forty five thousand participants submitted ninety five games and applications with twelve submissions selected as the ultimate winners additionally as a part of the usda open government flagship initiatives the forest service directly improved transparency collaboration and participation by increasing public participation in its land management planning rule by leveraging information technology to improve collaboration and interaction using web two technologies and online collaborative environments the agency provided the public with updates on the planning rule process and enabled them to submit comments the agency also held public meetings and listening sessions all over the country to gain input from these citizens more than seven hundred individuals were not able to attend these in person using collaborative technologies they were able to participate remotely involved more than twenty six thousand comments on the notice of intent and more than forty public meetings with over three zero participants including the national science forum tribal consultation and forest service employees submitting comments this increased focus on accountability and transparency built upon our commitment to strong financial stewardship as evidenced by usda compliance with the transparency act in september of two thousand and six the transparency act was enacted as required by the act the office of management and budget established the usaspending gov website to provide elements regarding federal award within thirty days after that award and usda data being reported to the public includes grants cooperative agreements direct and guaranteed loans direct payments insurance and contracts usda has a comprehensive information technology your oral testimony in five minutes mister brito thank you mister chairman members of the committee thank you for inviting me to testify on transparency through technology as someone who believes that internet enabled transparency can lead to better and more accountable government i am gratified by governments efforts in this base for the past five transparency is an issue that has been genuinely embraced by both sides of the political aisle what was once an esoteric concept that meaningful transparency requires disclosures to be online and open searchable in machine readable format has become a generally accepted ideal those are great strides however despite the obama administrations technological efforts and congressional legislation like the federal funding accountability and transparency act whether government is performing effectively is still not completely transparent that is because the vast majority of newly available data is not about government and disclosures that are about government tend to report its activities not data on program outcomes when program outcomes are reported they tend to be suspect because they are self measured and self reported by program managers on data gov the government has compiled wonderful never before available data sets about regulated industries but little about its own performance excluding the three hundred and five thousand datasets that pertain to geodata the data gov data catalog makes available just over three thousand raw datasets of these about half are related to the toxic release inventory compiled by the epa these are disclosures about regulated entities that while very valuable to individuals and researchers tell us little about the performance of government a quick scan of the remaining one thousand five hundred datasets reveals that only two hundred to three hundred report on the activities or performance of government there is plenty of smoke but little fire one of the better datasets available is research gov this national science foundation database of federally funded science and engineering research allows users to search for grants by keyword location or grantee see which grants were awarded and for how much and learn about the results of each specific federally funded research projects this information is useful in holding government accountable for its performance less useful although no doubt valuable to some researchers are datasets like one from the u s geological survey on the effects of fire on rocky mountain olive side fly catcher bird nests spending transparency sites like usaspending org and the recovery gov site are also useful because they disclose governments actions they allow citizens watchdogs bloggers and reporters access to the raw data of the business of government it allows them to make creative uses of the data including making interesting mashups and allowing them to crowd source accountability however these types of sites are not perfect broadly while spending sites can help uncover instances of fraud waste and abuse which is very important they are less helpful in measuring performance because they simply disclose outputs amounts of money disbursed to recipients and simple descriptions of contracts or grants to determine whether a program is performing as intended the public needs information not only about outputs but also about outcomes with a federal spending crisis on our hands congress must soon decide which programs to cut and which to keep voters will have to decide if they support congress choices the whole process would be much easier if information existed about the relative performance of government programs in the private sector a corporation must disclose its earnings as well as its expenditures and assets on a quarterly basis such an objective measure of performance not only allows the market to set a stock price but it also allows shareholders to hold management accountable now think of government transparency all agencies and programs disclose their expenditures in an annual budget and through sites like usaspending gov what government does not report are earning figures for the simple reason that there are none therefore a government program may be transparent and yet the public sees only half of the balance sheet congress tried to solve this problem with the government performance and results act the problem with gpra performance reporting however is that the very managers of the programs are charged with developing performance measures measuring their own programs and writing self evaluating performance reports even in the nsfs research gov site which i mentioned it is the award recipients who write the performance reports in the private sector congress has recognized that this doesnt work congress has required that publicly traded companies must hire independent third party auditors to help prepare and certify reports under the sarbanes oxley act corporate managers are personally liable for the veracity of th reports congress might want to consider similar independent audits of agency performance reporting i am looking forward to the launch of the new performance gov initiative by omb which promises to provide data driven reviews of progress toward clearly defined goals at federal those reviews however wont be very meaningful if they are self reported or based on shaky data the progress congress and the obama administration have made in making transparency and especially online transparency a key objective for government cannot be overstated the culture of secrecy that has long pervaded federal agencies is beginning to change however we must make sure that open government is first and foremost about transparency and that transparency is clearly understood as disclosure of government performance in the service of greater accountability thank you and i look forward to your question private sector so i have a little bit of an idea about having skin in the game and mister brito i am really interest when you talked about the principal and the agent reporting program because i have always thought in my business you dont want the fox watching the  house so could you expand a little bit more on where we should go with this because i am having an awful tough time following some we talk the talk but we dont walk the walk in government and we tell you how you should do it but we never do it ourselves so if you could just expand a little bit in what the purpose would be in having an outside agency looked at because in my business i always bring in outside auditors i would never ever do it internally it gives you a false picture it gives you a completely unrealistic idea of what is going on with your business and i will tell you the number one thing that i find out when we hire a new person they come in after their first pay and they say i thought i was getting paid more i say well this is what we paid you now look through all the deductions and this is what you are taking home so there is a huge difference between what we pay and what they take home and they ask me where did it go and i say well take a look and you can find out it went to the government and they say well what the heck are they doing with my money i say you know what that is anybodys guess isnt it so if you could just tell me a little bit about what you would suggest as far as outside sure economists will talk about a concept called principal agent problem which is very simple lets say you have a corporation which is owned by shareholders thousands of shareholders they hire a board of directors to manage a corporation and the board hires performance measurement and the way that works is very simple this is what congress did in the government performance and results act which is that for a program the agency before it begins a program needs to say these are the results we expect to achieve these are the data driven measurements that we will use to determine whether we met those results and then at the end of the period whether it is a year or quarterly you measure and you see whether you met those results if you didnt meet those results well then congress can go look at that program see how it can be fixed see if it needs to be eliminated unfortunately the responsibility of creating the measurements of measuring and of reporting is all on the very same agency that runs the program and so that creates again this principal  agent problem in the private sector you wouldnt expect simply to take managements word about the performance of the company you bring in a third party auditor that is required by congress but even if it wasnt required by congress i would suspect that shareholders and board your statement that we dont have profit i would say we do have loss and i have never seen any business that could run this way consistently a trillion dollars in the red for three straight years and feel that hey we are doing all right ms miller one of the things i found interesting is in your written testimony it citizens are most interested in what information do you think is most important what should be made more public ms miller i will be glad to answer that i think our criticism with respect to the availability of data really applies to data gov we certainly agree with mister britos assessment in terms of the amount of data that is actually on that site sunlight advocated with the administration that all the data that i made available by government be made available in machine readable formats as you heard from our government colleagues here the administration has done that but there is just very little information that is made available it is hard for me to sit here as a resident of washington d c and say what someone in your city would be most interested in but sunlight has been exploring some of this and we know people are interested desperately in health care issues they are interested in education issues they are interested in consumer related banking issues so we are beginning actually to develop apps from the publicly made available the data that has been made available either on their own websites or on data  v to move into this sort of consumer facing information that our best instincts tell us need to be there it has not been easy to find this kind of data immediately accessible  more of what citizens need i think the administration and the various agencies have bene asking citizens what do they need again to their credit we have to sort of pull back and maybe in another six months try to assess that as government  agencies because i think all of them are struggling so if we had to say which was better than the others as i mentioned in my testimony i dont think there is a single agency that would get an a so there are failures of different kinds and substance throughout the agencies why those spending amounts are recorded so differently i honestly cannot answer but i suggest mister smith might be able to answer why we see such discrepancies mister lynch well let me ask you then you  say that across the board that agencies are keeping two sets of books and this might be one example of that ms miller it may be mister lynch they keep a set of books for operational purposes but then when they report to the taxpayer to the public agree with my colleagues that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that is the responsibility of this oversight committee to find out how much is being spent where it is being spent is it being spent wisely we had the  director of the office of personnel management here earlier this week he could not tell me the number of contractors that we have for the u s government he thinks it is around  ten million but i cant even find out how many folks we actually have out there working for the government there is a lot of pressure on federal employees but here we have these ten million contractors at least i guess  working for different aspects of our government it just doesnt seem like we have a handle on this at all i applaud your efforts and i dont mean to single anybody out but we need a lot more work done on this  absolutely and i think the first step to that is oversight well perhaps the first step was the analysis which the sunlight foundation has done in expanding that analysis sunlight only looked at grants we have not looked at administration the necessary documents that we need to do that and they have told us that we could not have that information so we foiad it six months ago and we are still waiting because we would very much like to move into examining is the value of transparency so i think we appreciate the outside view and the particular question that you asked and that ms miller brought up in her statement on child nutrition programs in particular when looking at the legislative intent of the ffata act  and that individuals would not be reported for awards the school lunch program and also being below twenty five thousand dollars for the first three years of that act we did not report individual awards we have reassessed that as we have gone along as questions were raised and at the beginning of this fiscal year child nutrition programs will be reported in there so again i think it is a matter of what is being asked how we are reporting it and then how do you track that back to the authoritative records and to the point on audits we are strong believers in audits every year we go us i just have a broad overview question do you think part of the data problems and i guess i will direct that to mister smith or doctor harris because you work within the agencies is there some level of accountability for the spending gov and we match that against our financial system we match it against the data stream that we send and then we match it against what is actually in usaspending gov now it does go through a treatment when it hits usaspending and that is when we get the opportunity to actually make those changes but i do think at the core and someone spoke about it earlier i think at the core of data quality is having integrated systems such that human beings do not touch that data between source and reporting i think a large part of the reporting problem lies there echo my colleague doctor harris statement we want to go to the authoritative data source we dont want to reconcile it multiple times along the way so put it in once read it many times and do the reporting i think the issue we face is there are sometimes subsets we are looking at when you dont have the whole picture and we are trying to recreate that is where we start to get differences and when one group is looking at one thing and the other but we put a very repeatable rigorous process in any time there is a new requirement we try to go back to that authoritative source so we are not reworking it we check guess mister brito may be the one to ask this next question but if anybody else wants to jump in feel free when we look at these and maybe ms miller might kick in here too when we look at these aggregation sites are we comparing apples apples is there equivalent of generally accepted accounting practices for the government or are we just getting thrown data as each individual agency sees it and there is no real standard or freedom of information act these agencies for information do you have an overall sense that the agencies are friendly to publishing this information or are you running into noes and agencies saying we dont really want this information out ms miller let me clarify we did not have to do a foia for any information for the original analysis that we did that focused on the quality of the agency that still cannot get a clean audit at the federal government level it is obviously the largest procurement agency at the federal level there is an enormous amount of very important data there that i think even as members of congress we dont always know whether we have proper access to and maybe you dont have an answer to this question but i wanted to know about your experiences with the quality of data and the amount of data that comes out of the department of defense and how relevant that is to individuals that are trying to understand the decisions that are being made there and how that money is being spent ms miller let me consult with my colleagues just briefly to see what their experience has been with respect to d gov my colleague kaitlin lee reports that most of what happens at dod is done through contracting they do very little direct grants we have only looked at the grants but if we receive this foia information that we have requested we will be able to report on that in about six months so i am sorry we dont have that information mister murphy i bring that up because as we try to grapple with a lot of complex spending questions i think what members find is that  even we dont have access to important data certainly the public doesnt and mister brito is nodding his head so i am happy to give you a chance at this question as well but as a for instance when it comes to contracting decisions what we have found is that over the last several years there has been a massive outflow of contracts to overseas companies and we get just a shadow of data regarding those contracts we know for instance from year to year how many waivers to the requirement to purchase here in america are granted but we dont know anything more we get a report on the number of waivers but we dont know what type of waivers they were why the waivers were granted and so there is a larger conversation from a statutory perspective that has to happen about what kind of data the public receives from the department of defense but i will be very interested to hear the results of your contracting audit going forward because i think there is a frustration in the e secretary of defense for lets see during the bush administration never signed the certification never did so that is something that we need to is somewhere just south of seven dollars trillion it is clearly not the right number and i wanted to just before the panel was up to give you a chance to maybe explain why that number appears on the website and what happened there investigation led to when we report the loan amount to usaspending gov the instructions tell us to report it at the face value and in fact every single time we report for that specific loan we report it at the face value sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down based on activity against that loan but if you aggregate that unlike other data elements that you can aggregate and they give you an accurate amount if you aggregate that amount over time are going to come up with a ridiculous number but this is where context becomes the biggest issue we have with open government reporting we have to do a significantly better job at informing the public on not just what the data means what the data attribute means so we believe it is the aggregation that was incorrect when i look at the data on usaspending gov it is accurate for the department of education  with this question has the obama administration been helpful in assisting your department in creating your open government plan and your efforts to meet the open government directive and i would ask you both maybe we can start with doctor harris harris absolutely i think the number one help if you will would be in the way of a challenge and we look at the department of education we look at open government in two ways probably a slightly unconventional way one is certainly providing data to the general public in a way where they can take the data and do what they need to do with it but the other piece that we push hard on is collaboration and when you initially hear the word collaboration you are thinking of the public collaborating with the government but when you look at our race to the top program and you look at our innovation program we are actually providing data to the public that they can collaborate with each other this is where we feel true innovation in education comes as doctor harris has said the secretary asked me to serve on a working group that the white house convened and i think every agency was asked to do that and we worked through and i think a testament to that is ms miller and other groups such as  being invited also to comment as we developed these plans to make sure that we had a full and open conversation as each agency developed their plans and we shared those plans across the federal government and sought to put out the best product then we iterated those as we went forward i think one of the most important things is that as we are looking at transparency collaboration and participation how does that drive the mission forward what is the economic impact if we are putting data out there what is the ability for citizens to take that and have an economic impact for us in those rural areas or if it food safety how do we push the nation forward by being more open transparent and accountable mister walberg very important with both entities to have that transparency and the administration as well let me continue the questioning what considerations did you undergo in the selection process mister harris at the department of education we certainly did not see the issue as a technology issue it was more of a business processing issue i am currently the senior accountable official for data quality at the department of education i wore for many years at the department of education the chief financial officer hat but i am a technologist but what is more important is as the official i bring together individuals subject matter experts from the program offices subject matter experts from finance and subject matter experts from technology to make sure that we get it right so that is kind of how we did it  the secretary asked me to take the lead but it was very clear that i myself was not going to get this done so we had a team based approach we built a rigorous governance structure around it it was myself and the deputy under secretary for natural resources and environment and we actually have a meeting standing coming out there was a requirement to get at least three high value data sets how are those chosen what was the process you went through if you could be brief i have a ton of questions mister harris sure as you are well aware mister chairman we have a very very visible secretary in arnie duncan duncan spends a tremendous amount of time on the road and he is constantly asking the citizens what information do you want much of our information flows down from senior leadership in that way and that is kind of how we decided  lankford when you are choosing as far as priority of where to put things obviously your agency has a very good website for both your agencies and the information that is out there when you are choosing information where does it land the agency  how that data was being used and asked the question what part of this data do you like what dont you like mister smith yes we apply it again to the whole portfolio let me give you a quick example the farmers markets we expose the information on where all the farmers markets are in the nation we have seen maps produced so we are having an impact on small business and farmers to sell fresh produce throughout the country and hope that that increases traffic to those markets mister lankford i spend time obviously going through a lot of the things that are out there as far as information and try to get a good handle on it but one of the interesting things i am sure you have done the same thing on it when i go to data gov and i input agriculture or i go through the search features and there are multiple different vehicles for that or education on that when i go to data gov and ask for just raw data on it for education it comes up with nine datasets that come up for education and for agriculture it comes up with twenty total and the twenty that are out there the farmers market one you just illustrated all of them are from previous years they are older data on that so just trying to process through obviously there are multiple places i think it is located it is just having data gov the goal of it was to have a place where you type it in it all comes up there and it is actually not coming up there when you start doing a search on it mister smith i will certainly go back and take a look at that the point is to look at the cfda data base and you look at usaspending gov the average citizen would expect to see the exact same number in both places mister lankford correct mister harris but in fact the reporting is done at different periods of time are we doing a good enough job in explaining to the average there no one really knows where to go to get it and we dont have a single portal to say go here and it will link to everything else we are missing that so that is a big piece i think we have to be able to resolve on this just getting the basics of where it goes from there  would have the address for instance all in one file so when i wanted to search for oklahoma and say what are all the different grants that are out there for oklahoma it is not possible to do because if i just type in ok as a search i get every look crook and hook coming up as well in my in each and every area so we are very focused on that in particular the areas we are focused on right now are transparency and the reporting areas you have talked about we have been able to take the existing data put it into a readable format and get it out there when you throw that  t even more largely there are challenges out there and we consistently strive to work on those a good example of what we are doing in the department of agriculture is farmers report acreage are reporting multiple different ways across multiple programs so we have set out to use the national information exchange model as the standard not only that the farmer uses but agribusiness and government so that everybody can report and share information in the same manner mister lankford right i would assume every different one of those groups as well as every grant that is out there has a unique i d that it is using  is difficult to even track is this the same vendor as this they might have a similar name and they might have a little difference on it is there a way to be able to set it up and say this is the unique i d so if we are searching no matter if they have a subset underneath that general agency we can still track it and say all of those that have this name they are all here and we can search all of them is that possible to be able to do mister smith the ccr and dons effort looked to get one master vendor data file in which that solves the issue of contractors and  are working with and i think we have made great strides on that front but it remains an issue that we are working on constantly to keep that data clean mister harris certainly this is pointed out i believe in the sunlight foundations report something that we have known for many years that partnership with the public because they are the ones who have to do business with the federal government they are the ones who actually have to get these identifiers and they have to concur that one identifier for the entity makes sense and that they are willing to do it  directly with that this panel is concluded