Each year, Congress requires thousands of reports from federal agencies, containing information on nearly every conceivable aspect of government. In fact, merely the list of those reports is over 200 pages long. But there is no organized method for the public to access those reports. A new bill would change that.

The Federal Times had an interesting piece last week on the contracting industry's reaction to a recent notice in the Federal Register seeking input on "how best to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to enable public posting of contract actions." Despite the FAR Councils' stated efforts to post contracts "without compromising contractors' proprietary and confidential commercial or financial information," industry executives are beside themselves over such a monumental change. Not surprisingly, their arguments against the idea don't hold much water.

We're generally pretty happy with the new Open Government Directive on federal spending transparency. Specifically, we're pleased to see that the administration is moving to comply with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA). Among other things, FFATA required sub-award reporting information on USAspending.gov, the government's spending website, as of 2009. But for more than a year, the Obama administration has not complied with this aspect of the law (in defense of the current administration, the Bush administration also did nothing to add sub-award data onto USAspending.gov, making this a bi-partisan screw-up). The new memo changes that, and mandates that agencies submit sub-award data to USAspending.gov starting October 1 of this year. The only problem is that the Open Government Directive memo limits the reach of this sub-award reporting.

On Dec. 22, 2008, an earthen dam holding back a pond of coal ash in Kingston, Tenn., broke, sending 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic goo cascading across the landscape. That's enough to fill the White House from top to bottom 200 times over.