Information
Organization's Own Description:
Americans deserve easy access to their government's information. Federal data should be published online in electronic formats that make it easy to search, sort and download.
Too often, however, the U.S. government fails to publish crucial spending, regulatory, and legislative data - or publishes such data using inconsistent or outdated electronic formats. With data transparency, taxpayers and media could scrutinize federal spending; market analysts could analyze regulatory data; and civic activists could better understand proposed bills. Without data transparency, these activities are difficult or impossible.
In recent years, some members of Congress, leaders in the executive branch, and civic activists have begun to call for federal data transparency. However, bills that would require consistent electronic formats for financial regulation and for federal spending data have not yet been passed.
The Data Transparency Coalition is being formed to serve as a leading voice for the publication of standardized federal data. The coalition will bring together for-profit and non-profit organizations to inform Congress, the executive branch, and the public about the benefits of using consistent electronic formats to track government spending, regulatory filings, and legislative actions. The coalition will support the adoption of interoperable government-wide identifiers for agencies, programs, grants, contracts, regulated entities, and other basic data elements. The coalition will also support the use of markup languages that organize data elements in predictable ways.
Data transparency in our government can be achieved if leaders in Congress and the executive branch embrace two principles: consistent publication and electronic standardization. Data transparency will make federal information technology more efficient. Data transparency will help the American technology industry create thousands of new jobs in data delivery and analysis. And by opening the government to its people, data transparency will strengthen our democracy.
Achieving data transparency will be difficult. But it is possible.
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