White House Throws Open the Doors of Government
Dec 8, 2009 by Sean Moulton
As you probably know, the Obama administration
released the Open Government Directive this morning. OMB Watch applauds this latest effort
to create a more open and accountable government.
read in fullOpen Government Directive to be Released During Live Webcast - 11am, 12/8
Dec 7, 2009 by Roger Strother*
The open government directive is scheduled to be released at 11am on Dec. 8. The announcement will be made in a live webcast hosted by US CIO Vivek Kundra and US CTO Aneesh Chopra. There will be a live forum following the announcement so that citizens may give feedback and ask questions. Please watch the live announcement here or on the White House website and check back with the OMB Watch blog for more analysis. Dowload the directive here [PDF].
read in fullCongressional Action Succesful in Blocking Judicial Release of Torture Photos
Nov 30, 2009 by Roger Strother*
On Nov. 30, Congress and the President succeeded in tying the hands of the judicial system from releasing photographic evidence of American soldiers torturing detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Supreme Court today reversed a lower court ruling that the pictures must be released.
read in fullHouse Sheds Light on Member Expenses
Nov 30, 2009 by Chris George*
In an unprecedented move to increase congressional transparency, as of 1 pm this afternoon, the House of Representatives Statement of Disbursements is available online.
read in fullMSNBC’s Dubious Insinuation of Job Data Manipulation
Nov 12, 2009 by Craig Jennings
A paragraph in an article written by Mike Stuckey on MSNBC.com insinuates that the White House manipulated the Recovery.gov job count total to match its previous claims of job growth numbers. I can't tell if Stuckey simply has his facts wrong, is intending to mislead to create controversy, or has been misled by an unscrupulous source.
read in fullRecovery.gov Search Finds More Stuff
Nov 2, 2009 by Craig Jennings
It appears that the Recovery.gov search engine improved over the weekend (my guess is that the indexing service took a while to organize all the data). When I search recipient reports for "alpha," "Alpha Building Foundation Corp" still isn't found, but some 110 results are displayed for other awards containing the word "alpha." And when I search for "Savannah River," "Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC" is returned, unlike what I was seeing on Friday.
read in fullAdministration Releases More Visitor Logs
Nov 2, 2009 by Roger Strother*
On Friday, the Obama administration released another set of visitor logs. The list of 110 White House guests was compiled from public requests and includes names such as Brad Pitt, Jesse Jackson, and several business leaders. This release is a positive step toward building a system of government transparency that is responsive to the public interest but we would still like to see the administration go further with this effort.
A Note on New Recovery.gov Features
Oct 30, 2009 by Craig Jennings
We've been pawing at Recovery.gov for a couple of hours now and the results are...mixed.
read in fullImproved Data Recipient Data File on Recovery.gov
Oct 19, 2009 by Craig Jennings
Kudos to the Recovery Board for responding so quickly to user complaints that recipient report data on Recovery.gov was spread over some 120 files had parsing issues when opened in a spreadsheet. Since Friday, the Board has added to Recovery.gov's Download Center a single file containing all prime and sub-recipient reports. Not only that, but the file is a Microsoft Excel file, which means that commas appearing in some of the data fields won't confuse your spreadsheet application like the CSV files originally posted.
read in fullDIY Transparency
Oct 15, 2009 by Craig Jennings
Updated below
While we applaud the Recovery Board for making Recvoery Act recipient reports available in a downloadable format (CSV files), we are a bit frustrated that the one has to pull together some 180 individual files into one spreadsheet to see all the data in one space.
