On Monday, members of the House Intelligence Committee held an open hearing into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election that included a discussion of whether the U.S. government improperly surveilled officials or associates of any campaign. During that hearing, members of both parties favorably referred to Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, a sweeping piece of intelligence legislation that is up for reauthorization later this year and, in our view, permits significant offenses against Americans’ civil liberties. Section 702 authorizes two truly alarming efforts that must be reformed or ended. Continue reading “Drawing a Line on Mass Surveillance: How Congress Must Reform Section 702”
Tag: Executive Branch
Will Sen. McConnell Finally Close the Presidential Library Golden Parachute for Ex-Presidents (and a Future One)?
Yesterday the Clinton Foundation announced it no longer would accept donations from corporate or foreign entities should Hillary Clinton be elected president, responding to criticism for “potentially allowing donors to seek special access through [Clinton’s] government post.” Unremarked upon is the danger of having a foundation linked to a president accepting any donations during his or her term of office, a circumstance that led to major scandals in the last three administrations.
Over the last 70 years, every outgoing president raised money for a presidential library. George W. Bush hauled in a Texas-sized $500 million, and Barack Obama expects to reach a cool billion in his already-underway efforts, though the president himself promised he personally will not fund-raise in office. With the existing Clinton Foundation, potential president Hillary Clinton may have a head start. The libraries aren’t just a repository for presidential papers; they are an attempt at telling the story of a presidency from the president’s perspective. Continue reading “Will Sen. McConnell Finally Close the Presidential Library Golden Parachute for Ex-Presidents (and a Future One)?”
What Happens to VP Biden’s Senate Office Documents When He Leaves?
Here’s a random thought. Vice President Biden maintains an office in the United States Senate, where he serves as President of the Senate. It is a good sized office — the Senate’s statement of expenditures (p. B-65) indicates it has a $2.5 million annual budget and more than 30 staff who play policy, communications, and logistical roles.
Is that office subject to FOIA? The Presidential Records Act? What will happen to its records when Vice President Biden leaves offices? Under law, are its records treated as part of the Executive or Legislative branches, both, or something else? Vice President Biden played a major role as the president’s ambassador to Congress. His work and the work of his team could shed interesting new light on the administration’s efforts to work with Congress and its role in policy development, especially as Congress is not subject to FOIA and committee records are locked down for decades. Continue reading “What Happens to VP Biden’s Senate Office Documents When He Leaves?”
Tracking Lobbying by Foreign Governments
In the next few months, the Justice Department’s Inspector General will release a report on lobbying by foreign powers aimed at the federal government. Unlikely lobbying by American citizens and companies, tracked by the House of Representatives and Senate, lobbying by agents of foreign powers is monitored by the Department of Justice.
The law requiring reporting by foreign lobbyists — known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA — originated in the 1930s and grew out of the concern that it’s important to know when foreign governments are trying to influence U.S. policy. It differers from domestic lobbying reporting in three important ways. Continue reading “Tracking Lobbying by Foreign Governments”
Nudging Justice Forward — A little appropriation goes a long way
The Department of Justice is one of the most enigmatic federal agencies. Entrusted with enormous power, it can be a tremendous champion for the public good. But with great power — as the axiom says — comes great responsibility, and the Justice Department twists and turns away from public scrutiny that assesses its behavior.
Congress ultimately bears the responsibility to hold the Executive Branch to account, which is why we submitted testimony last Friday encouraging the legislature to do just that. While the Justice Department is virtually untouchable, its Achilles’ heel is its funding, which is where we put in our request: to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that is considering funding for Commerce, Science, Justice, and related agencies.
We requested three things: Continue reading “Nudging Justice Forward — A little appropriation goes a long way”
Civic Organizations Warn White House on Failing Transparency Legacy
In an unusually strongly worded letter, today Demand Progress and twelve civic organizations warned President Obama that his legacy on transparency issues is in danger. After identifying serious failings on the part of the administration — including its efforts to undermine FOIA legislation, federal spending transparency legislation, and the stalling of its ethics agenda — the organizations issued this warning:
[W]hat troubles us is that it appears your White House team lacks the will and interest to undertake the challenge of this transformative work, and in some instances actively undermined forward progress. Indeed, in some areas that appear well within the administration’s control, there has even been backsliding — for instance, novel uses of the state secrets privilege and the unprecedented number of Espionage Act prosecutions for disclosures to the media.
There is a very real danger that instead of leaving the legacy of transparency that you intended, you risk leaving with a very different legacy: one of betrayed promises. Circumstances may force us to rate your administration as one that failed to fulfill its goals.
In this last year of your presidency, you have the opportunity to revive your legacy for open and transparent government.
The organizations recommended a series of remedial actions that, if taken in concert, may salvage the administration’s reputation. They include:
- Endorse the FOIA bill that has passed the Senate. (The Administration reportedly recently did so.)
- Proactively disclose agency visitor logs.
- Release and declassify the torture report that originated in the Senate.
- Shed light on our rigged campaign finance system through an Executive Order on federal contractor political spending and other means.
- Protect whistleblowers (including contractors) in the national security context.
- Fight to slow down the revolving door.
There is no doubt there still are good people in the administration fighting for open government and transparency. There are many amazing people in the agencies. But they need an ally at the top — one who, even in the waning days of the administration, can set priorities and cut through the bureaucracy.
The president has reminded us in another context that he’s still in office and is still working. Let’s hope he will reengage on open, accountable, and transparency government.
— Written by Daniel Schuman
New Report: Opening up the One Agency that Rules Them All
The most powerful federal agency is one no one outside of Washington has heard of. It controls how agencies request money from Congress and spend it, oversees virtually all major rulemakings, controls multi-agency processes, sets federal information policy, and more. In some respects, it’s the tail that wags the White House dog. The agency is the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Over the course of the Obama administration we’ve made recommendations on how OMB should lighten up — I mean open up. We made recommendations to the administration’s National Act Plan, which is intended to contain actionable open government commitments, drafted guidelines on how agencies can improve proactive disclosure, and suggested how to make earmarks more transparent.
More than six years ago the Obama administration started a new process by which agencies release open government plans every two years. OMB oversees the process and is supposed to issue a plan as well. While OMB issued a plan in 2010, it failed to do so in 2012 and 2014.
Today we issue new recommendations to OMB as to what it should include in its open government plan, which are essentially warmed-over recommendations from 2014. But they’re still good ideas. They include:
- Publishing Congressional Budget Justifications online in one central place. (I wrote about this yesterday).
- Creating a machine-readable organization chart of the federal government. (This idea was adopted as part of the National Action Plan last year).
- Fixing how the government gathers information through forms by making sure they’re well designed, catch input errors, flow easily into databases, and are built for maximum disclosure and reuse.
- Creating better disclosure for when outside lobbyists push OIRA to change or kill a proposed regulation.
- Set forth guidelines on how agencies can think through and proactively disclose information they hold.
Frankly, this is a fairly modest list. OMB should be leading on federal spending transparency by pushing forward DATA Act implementation, providing significant assistance to improve implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, rethinking its entire regulatory approval process, reexamining how it implements cost/benefit analysis, setting forth regulations mandating public access to information, and much more.
But there isn’t much useful time left in the administration. We hope OMB will act on the recommendations and issue a substantive open government plan soon, especially with Sunshine Week soon upon us.
— Written by Daniel Schuman
It’s Federal Budget Day. (Groan)
How to make sense of the President’s spending proposal.
Today is the day the White House sends the President’s budget to Congress. The proposal — dead on arrival — is an unintelligible mishmash of happy talk, legislative language, and columns of data.
Buried in the pablum is something useful: explanations of what the government does. Imagine, if you can, a plain language description of what each agency does or plans to do, replete with just enough detail to give a good idea of what’s happening. That, in short, sums up agency-produced documents known as “Congressional Budget Justifications” (or CJs, pehaps named after former White House communications director C. J. Cregg.)
In its CJ, an agency provides Congress a rationale for why the legislative branch should make money available for an agency to spend. It says what they’ve done and what they’re planning to do.
The White House’s consigliere, an agency known as the Office of Management and Budget (or OMB, pronounced Oh Em Bee), makes sure the budget proposal and its explanation reflect White House priorities.
OMB sets the rules for how agencies write the budget in a really tedious document known as OMB Circular A-11. Among many other things, it directs agencies to release the full congressional justification materials available to the public and to post them on the internet within two weeks of sending the stuff to Congress. (I’m paraphrasing section 22.6(c)).
There are a couple of problems with this approach to making budget information available to the public.
- Unless you stay as home as much as I do, there’s probably no way to know the CJs exist.
- The CJs are scattered across the internet. You have to know exactly what you’re looking for. And even when you do, mighty Google still can lead you on a wild goose chase.
- Agencies publish the CJs inconsistently. Some departments publish all agencies justifications together as one giant PDF file — which can be so large it crashes your browser. And it’s not possible to do a track changes on PDFs to show how a CJ has changed from year to hear.
- Over time, the CJs can be lost as agencies update their pages.
- The White House has a central page for information about the federal budget — this one — filled with everything you’d want to know about the proposal except the Congressional Budget Justifications.
An association of people even nerdier than myself, the American Association for Budget and Program Analysts, usually compiles links to all the CJs. This should be a job for OMB, especially since it already is publishing everything else. Not everyone will find the AABPA website, it may not be complete or timely, and you have to know what you’re doing.
One purpose of open government is to make government accessible and understandable to everyone. OMB should publish explanatory information on the federal budget where the public, journalists, advocates, and policy experts would expect to find it. (The open government community has been asking them to do this for several years.)
Congress could get into the act, too.
The Budget or Appropriations Committee could gather up the documents — they are Congressional Budget Justifications, after all — and publish them on their websites, or encourage a legislative support agency like the Congressional Budget Office to do so. It would be a little weird, as why would Congress publish the White House’s public relations documents, but it would address the disclosure problem.
The Appropriators could also direct (i.e. require) OMB to update its regulation to publish the CJs on OMB’s website. It shouldn’t take an act of Congress to get OMB on the job, but what’s a little nudge between coequal branches of government?
— Written by Daniel Schuman
Presidential Libraries: The Billion Dollar Cash Grab
President Obama intends to raise at least $800 million from private donors — with hopes for $1 billion — for his presidential library, which will include a library, museum, office space, activity space, and probably a gift shop, too. It will be twice as costly as the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, with fundraising efforts almost entirely untouched by federal laws that impose limitations and transparency requirements on donations to campaigns for political office.
Historically this blind spot has proven dangerous,
with outgoing presidents concerned about raising enough money,
while still in office, to ensure their legacy.
The last three outgoing administrations ran into library fundraising-related scandals, including allegations of trading a presidential pardon for money. That is why we and a coalition of 15 organizations are urging the House and Senate to enact reform legislation, the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act.
The legislation brings potential conflicts of interest to light by providing a reliable, timely way to see donations by foreign governments, corporations, lobbyists, and wealthy benefactors. It requires fundraising organizations (e.g., the Barack Obama Foundation) to submit report quarterly to the National Archives on each person or entity that contributed more than $200; and for the Archives to publish those reports in a database within 30 days of receipt. It makes it a crime to “intentionally and willfully” submit wrong information. And once the president is no longer in office and the National Archives takes control over the library, the reporting requirements end.
To his credit, President Obama voluntarily adopted limits — “for the remainder of his term” — on donations from foreign nationals, currently registered federal lobbyists or foreign agents, and corporations that are not charitable organizations.
But the limits do not extend to corporate titans,
former lobbyists or their superiors,
and individuals with business before the government.
President Obama is voluntarily disclosing donors and donations over $200, but without indicating exactly how much was given. No governmental entity oversees the reporting to ensure it is accurate, timely, or complete, and the president can change his mind on disclosure at any time.
Generally speaking, past presidents have not voluntarily engaged in significant disclosure, although Senator Clinton mentioned her co-sponsorship of an earlier version of this legislation during a primary debatewith Barack Obama in 2007, while deferring questions on transparency of the Clinton Foundation’s finances to her husband.
Presidential libraries are not just archives,
but provide the base for a former president’s efforts
to shape his or her legacy, fund-raise,
hobnob, and remain influential.
Spearheaded by Rep. John Duncan (R-TX), the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act has been introduced every Congress since 2001, most recently winning bipartisan support from the committees of jurisdiction in the House and Senate. We urge the House and Senate to speedily take up this legislation before another presidency passes them by.
Lessons from 9/11 ← P R E V I O U S
N E X T → Save the Date: Second Congressional Hackathon
— Written by Daniel Schuman
#OpenGov National Action Plan Recommendations
Starting in 2011 and every two years afterward, the White House has drawn up an open government national action plan that is intended to contain specific, measurable open government commitments. The planning process is an outgrowth of the administration’s open government initiative, which kicked off in 2009 when agencies were first required to create open government plans, but takes place on an international scale. More than 65 countries are creating plans as part of the open government partnership.
Right now, the administration is collecting recommendations for the 2015 plan. We at Demand Progress have submitted recommendations on the publicly-available hackpad pages and are publishing them here, too.
The recommendations include:
Access to Information
- Create a proactive disclosure playbook, which provides guidance to agencies on how to identify datasets and other information ready for immediate online publication.
- Follow through on the commitment to create a standard set of agency regulations governing the FOIA process.
- Improve public disclosure of agency reports to Congress.
- Examine how Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act often impedes online publication of FOIA requests.
Lobbying and Influence
- Use modern methods to collect and publish data about foreign lobbyists.
- Significantly improve disclosure around lobbying efforts aimed at OIRA, which oversees major agency rulemakings.
Financial Transparency
- Public agency Congressional Budget Justifications, which describe agency plans in plain language at a high level of detail, on the White House’s budget page in modern formats.
- Improve disclosure of funding information for the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, which coordinates FOIA policy.
- Gather better data on which FOIA fees are collected.
Rule of Law
- Proactive disclosure of more opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which often are de facto law for agencies.
Government Operations
- Create a machine-readable organization chart for the federal government.
- Improve how the government creates and collects data through forms.
- Provide better information on USAJobs, the federal employment website, including greater detail about telework and the actual employment location.
- Create a free alternative to DUNs.
Access to Information
Public Disclosure Playbook — Issue Guidelines on Proactive Disclosure
Just as OMB created a public participation playbook, it should create a public disclosure playbook containing recommendations on processes agencies should follow to determine how to better proactive disclosure information. Agencies should be consulted on setting up the process. To help prioritize, agencies should look at requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, via other request-based systems (i.e., specialized forms for a particular dataset or document), and information regularly disclosed by public affairs and congressional relations offices.
Categories of information to consider for proactive release include: commercial (business-related), current events (relevant to journalists), ethics (relevant to government watchdogs, such as lobbying, ethics waivers, etc.), agency operations, and datasets (paper versions are disclosed to the public but the underlying dataset must be FOIA’d). More detailed recommendations are available here.
Better Disclosure of Agency Reports to Congress
Federal agencies are required to provide thousands of reports to Congress. Many of those reports are required to be published online; many other are available through FOIA. However, there is no central location for these reports — whether by agency or across the government. Each agency should have a dedicated webpage where all reports are published chronologically in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format. In addition. OMB should gather all executive branch reports and publish them on one central website — ideally the White House budget page. This will facilitate information discovery about executive branch activities, encourage the sharing of best practices, aid the creation of dashboards, and lead to a reduction in redundant reports.
Unified FOIA Regulations
In the Second National Action Plan, the United States committed to developing common FOIA regulations and practices for federal agencies. While some initial work was done last year, the Justice Department-led effort of creating a set of common FOIA regulations and practices appears to have stalled. A coalition of organizations released draft recommendations on what those regulations should look like. DOJ’s Office of Information Policy should restart the process and issue the common regulations.
FOIA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
There is significant confusion around the extent to which Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits agencies from posting information online. A memorandum or other document that details how the law is intended to work should be released to the public. In addition, DOJ should investigate the extent to which Section 508 is preventing the online publication of documents, what steps are necessary to remove roadblocks, and how agencies may collaborate with the public to meet the needs of full disclosure as well as the legal requirements.
Lobbying and Influence
Modernize Foreign Agents Registration Act Data Collections and Reporting
During the campaign, candidate Obama pledged to “create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports … in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format.” While persons who lobby on behalf of domestic entities have their information published in this way, reporting practices for lobbyists for foreign entities have not been similarly modernized. The FARA database still permits registrants to submit paper documents and it publishes those documents as PDFs. This is in tension with the President’s call for transparency and obscures the useful information contained in the reports. Transparency advocates spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to transform these paper files into a searchable, sortable, downloadable database.
As part of its third Open Government Plan, the Department of Justice committed “to review the FARA website and electronic filing system, while soliciting reasonable and concrete suggestions and feedback from the public, and will work to make feasible and appropriate modifications to the database. Throughout this process, the Department will specifically investigate collecting and publishing registration information as structured data in a machine-readable format.”
It is time to require collection and publication of registration information as structured data. The Department of Justice should require all filings be made in an electronic format where the information can easily flow into a machine-processable digital format. In turn, that information should be released to the public in bulk as structured data so that the data it contains may be searched and sorted. To the extent the Justice Department has already transformed the information contained in the filings into an electronic database, that information should be published as well. Until filings are required in electronic formats, the Justice Department should publish data from all future FARA filings in bulk in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format. (We know it is possible.)
OIRA Lobbying Transparency
OIRA plays a central role in reviewing regulations. Executive Order 12866 and Disclosure Memo-B (2001) instantiate requirements to show how OIRA has affected a rulemaking and how OIRA has been lobbied by those seeking to alter the course of its deliberations. Multiple GAO and CRS reports, however, indicate that OIRA has not fully complied with its transparency requirements.
We believe that OMB should address the following concerns raised in GAO reports by:
- Defining the transparency requirements applicable to the agencies and OIRA in Executive Order 12866 in such a way that they include not only the formal review period, but also the informal review period when OIRA says it can have its most important impact on agencies’ rules.
- Reexamining OIRA’s current policy that only documents exchanged by OIRA branch chiefs and above need to be disclosed because most of the documents that are exchanged while rules are under review at OIRA are exchanged between agency staff and OIRA desk officers.
- Establishing procedures whereby either OIRA or the agencies disclose the reason why rules are withdrawn from OIRA review.
- Defining the types of “substantive” changes during the OIRA review process that agencies should disclose as including not only changes made to the regulatory text but also other, non-editorial changes that could ultimately affect the rules’ application (for example, explanations supporting the choice of one alternative over another and solicitations of comments on the estimated benefits and costs of regulatory options).
- Instructing agencies to put information about changes made in a rule after submission for OIRA’s review and those made at OIRA’s suggestion or recommendation in the agencies’ public rulemaking dockets, and to do so within a reasonable period after the rules have been published.
- Encouraging agencies to use “best practice” methods of documentation that clearly describe those changes.
We welcome OIRA’s recent effort to electronically publish information about lobbying activities. We hope OIRA will move to make this information available in bulk, or at a minimum, through an API.
We also agree with some recommendations made in a Center for Progressive Reform report, issued after reviewing all OIRA meetings between October 2001 and June 2011. In particular:
- That a rule proposed by an agency, both prior and after OIRA review, should be publicly posted and in such a format as to permit a determination of what has changed.
- If OIRA asks for a 30-day extension, its request and the agency head’s approval should be in writing and made public as soon as they are released.
- When OIRA examines non-economically significant rules, it should explain in writing how the proposal fits under the exceptions set forth in EO 12,866 and post that information online.
Financial Transparency
Congressional Budget Justifications
Every year each agency releases a congressional budget justification. This contains useful information about how the agency intends to make use of its funding. Under OMB Circular A-11 22.6(c), each agency is required to make its justification available to the public (including posted on the Internet) within two weeks after transmittal to Congress.
All these budget justifications should be centrally housed on OMB’s website along with all the other budget materials. It is often difficult to find agency congressional justifications on their websites. Moreover, many people are unaware of the existence of the justifications in the first place. Even GPO, apparently, is unaware of the justifications (see this), as it does not gather them along with its publication of other budget materials.
Budget justifications should be published in a format in addition to PDF, such as TXT or DOC. PDF format makes it virtually impossible for computers to make use of the underlying information. For example, if you wanted to compare this year’s justification against last year’s by tracking the changes, you would be unable to do so when dealing with a PDF. OMB already publishes data in alternative formats to facilitate public use (specifically XML and CSV), and it makes sense to publish text in a format that can be analyzed as well.
FOIA Spending at DOJ
The Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice responsible for coordinating government-wide FOIA policy as well as addressing DOJ-specific FOIA matters. Unfortunately, it is not possible to know how much money (and resources) OIP is putting towards its government-wide efforts versus internal-facing efforts. In each Congressional Budget Justification, OIP should report the amount of money spent processing FOIA requests for the seven senior management offices within DOJ; the amount of money spent on adjudicating administrative appeals for all units in DOJ; and the amount spent on FOIA policy and compliance.
Tracking FOIA Fees
As part of its annual report on FOIA, the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy should request agencies report on the amount of FOIA fees collected broken down by the basis on which the fees are collected.
Rule of Law
Office of Legal Counsel Opinions
In an Executive Order, President Obama wrote that “agencies should take affirmative steps to make information available to the public” and should “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure.” His first nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, joined by many others who served in the Justice Department, called on OLC to “publicly disclose its written legal opinions in a timely manner, absent strong reasons for delay or nondisclosure.” The Office itself, in its “best practices” memo, declares that “the Office operates under the presumption that it should make its significant opinions fully and promptly available to the public,” including considering “disclosing documents even if they technically fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.” We have found, however, that many reports are not available to the public.
The Department of Justice should update its policy to require disclosure of all opinions by default, except in certain limited circumstances. A determination to withhold publication should be made at the highest levels within the DOJ and be based upon clearly articulated rules. To the extent a document is withheld in full or in substantial part, a detailed unclassified summary of the opinion should be made available to the public in a timely way that conveys the essence of the opinion. In addition, the OLC should publish and contemporaneously update a complete list of all final opinions, indicating the title, author, subject, and date issued.
Government Operations
Machine Readable Organization Chart
The structure of the government is confusing and complex. While the “United States Government Manual” provides information about the structure of government, there is no machine readable organizational chart that allows one to uniquely identify programs and offices within the government. This information, however, would be useful to those who wish to track the functions of government programmatically.
Form Reform
OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is charged with enforcing the Paperwork Reduction Act, including how agencies promulgate forms. Current agency practice permits and often encourages the use of paper-forms to gather and channel requests for information. This leads to re-keying of data, significant data quality issues, inadvertent disclosure of private information, and significant delays in public access to data. OMB should lead an effort to reform how the government uses forms.
Forms should be electronic and allow for the easy flow of data into databases. (This is consonant with OMB’s new data policy that directs that information should be collected electronically by default.) Information should be validated upon input and automatically checked for errors. To the maximum extent possible, unique entity identifiers should be employed, particularly those that are consistent across databases. Forced-choice mechanisms and limited data fields should be employed to restrict the kinds of information that can be input. Data should be automatically segregated as to what is and is not disclosable, so that no further review is necessary for data tagged as disclosable.
In addition, OMB should employ multiple techniques to improve the quality of information submitted. Extensive user testing (including A/B testing) should be performed and monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure forms are as easy to understand and complete as possible. Behavioral economics should be employed to maximize the effect of data collection, including through the development of model forms. Furthermore, to the extent possible, data should be pre-populated to reduce the amount of time required to enter information.
Federal Jobs: Telework and Location Information
The federal jobs website USAJOBS provides information about employment opportunities. It does not provide some important information.
First, for each job, the location of the job (or the nearest intersection) should be published along with the vacancy announcement. Current practice is to publish the address of the main office. Publishing the job location will allow job seekers to determine whether the commute is for them.
Second, for each job, the nature of telework availability should be published. While USAJOBS already indicates whether telework is possible for a position, it does not say the frequency of telework. This can be an important factor for any job seeker.
Finally, OPM issues an annual report on telework in government. It contains 100 pages of data that unfortunately are printed in a PDF. The underlying data should also be published in a spreadsheet format (like CSV). The report is entitled “Status of Telework in the Federal Government” and can be found here.
Create an alternative to DUNs
DUNs, the Data Universal Numbering System owned by Dun & Bradstreet, is a copyrighted, proprietary system used by the government and others to uniquely identify businesses. We believe the government must move to a non-proprietary, open system. This will save tremendous amounts of money, avoid lock-in to a particular company, and allow innovative use of this data. Our friends at the Data Transparnecy Coalition explain this issue in detail here.
{ Like this? You may also like Top 5 Federal OpenGov Efforts, How Agencies Can Improve Proactive Disclosure, and A Checklist for Drafters of Transparency Legislation}
— Written by Daniel Schuman