president obama signed a memorandum on transparency and open government that set forth a new paradigm for an open and accountable government since then the administration has been unwavering in its commitment to increase transparency participation and collaboration to make our government more open accountable and efficient a lot has happened over the last two years the administration launched the accountable government initiative which outlines a performance management approach that drives agencies top priorities cuts waste reforms contracting closes the information technology gap promotes accountability and innovation through open government and continues our efforts to attract and motivate top talent to the federal government federal agencies are becoming more open publishing detailed open government plans and road maps in compliance with our open government directive final agency plans feature key openness initiatives the identification of data the public would consider highly valuable and new agency open government web pages to facilitate greater transparency the federal governments data has become the publics data data gov is a federal one stop data sharing platform designed to democratize access to data with hundreds of thousands of datasets in a common format housed in a central location federal spending clearly is becoming more transparent we launched paymentaccuracy gov in june two thousand and ten this contains information about current and historical rates and amounts of improper payments information on why improper payments occur and information about what agencies are doing to reduce and recover improper payments recovery gov presents unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability so that citizens can monitor the progress of the recovery act to track federal contracts grants and loans to an unprecedented degree and to provide feedback on the status and results of those investments at the community level usaspending gov is a one stop site that provides the public with an understanding of how federal dollars are spent accounting for billions of dollars spent across the executive branch agency the site not only contains valuable information on federal spending but has been recently expanded to include data on sub awards the public can now see where federal grant and contract dollars go down to the sub grantee and sub contractor levels providing easy access to information is critical to ensure that the government is held accountable for how it uses taxpayer dollars while much progress has been made going forward we need to continue our efforts to fulfill the presidents state of the union promise to build peoples faith in the institution of government we need to continue to refine the collection of data provide easy access to information collaborate with our stakeholders and encourage participation in how we conduct business the administrations commitment to open government is firm the mechanisms that have been and continue to be implemented constitute a new way of doing business that will persist for decades to come while we have accomplished many things there is still much work as i have mentioned the public cannot realize the full utility of transparent federal information if the data across our agencies are incompatible demonstrating our commitment to quality assurance we have already identified potential methods for data standardization particularly within federal spending information data standard will not only increase the usability of the information for the public but will also achieve long term benefits across federal agencies current efforts to provide quality and real time data to the public can consume many resources and at times manual process to ensure the data from multiple systems and sources reconcile to sustain and improve upon these efforts inter agency work groups have been launched with the commitment to drive high quality federal spending information and reevaluat and realign the underlying data standards as we continue to build upon the solid foundations of an open government we must constantly gauge our progress against the guiding principles of transparency participation and collaboration we embrace the opportunities to work with all of our stakeholders to reach the shared end goal of an open government thank you for the opportunity to testify today and i look forward to answering your questions mister lankford thank you very much i am moving to recognizing mister kelly the vice chairman to werfel the public citizens have a central role i think one of the tenets of open government is that accountability is necessary to push the types of results and improve government performance that citizens demand and that we have a responsibility to reach what we see day in and day out is that the more information is shared publicly about federal activities in particular for example where our federal dollars are going the more not only to citizens participate and engage in helping keep us accountable for those dollars but the government agencies themselves feel more accountable as was mentioned in the previous panel sunlight is a great disinfectant we certainly see that happening throughout government i think the recovery  particular is a great example of that mister kelly okay and i appreciate that but my question is if we are really looking for transparency and we are looking for participation and collaboration why werent you willing to go ahead and appear with the rest of the p werfel for the record congressman i would state that i am here now answering your questions and can be mister kelly that wasnt my question and i understand what you are saying but we keep talking about we want transparency we want people to have access to us and then when we have an opportunity to appear on a panel with other folks you decline that makes no sense to me but i come from the private world i dont come from this world i really am trying to understand why we talk one way and we act an entirely different way ready to answer any questions you have mister kelly and i recognize the fact that you are here but i really do in the world i come from i absolutely hate tap dancing when i cant get an answer and you do not have to be diplomatic with me you can be direct and i would hope you understand i am that same type of person so whenever we have an administration that says we want to be open we want to work with you we want you to know everything and then we invite them to sit here with us in the panel with the public and they dont show up and the answer is i will get back with you leads to bad process leads to a bad image of what the people in this country expect of us and they really do expect us to say what we mean and mean what we say that is just a real basic definition of integrity and i would suggest to you that in this town we had better start understanding what it is the american people expect from us and they do not expect to be given the runaround on things so i appreciate the fact that you are here and the fact that you cant answer but i would appreciate in writing the answers to why you could not appear with the other panel thank you are going to recess temporarily this hearing will resume in probably about forty to forty five minutes we will resume again with the questioning and then be able to address our questions with that we will stand in recess