The Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on December 8, 2009 included a mandate that all agencies create a data quality plan that enhanced the transparency of how agencies spend federal funds.  Two weeks ago, these plans were supposed to be finalized and released to the public but so far we can only find one agency’s plan.

Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist and contributor to The Nation, blogged this morning about a discovery he made in a recent Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General's (IG) report. The DOD IG found, in what Scahill mockingly referred to as "a not shocking revelation," that "private contractors working for U.S. Special Forces have been allowed to 'perform inherently governmental functions.'"

In a new blog post written for The Huffington Post, OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass finds similarities among the BP oil spill, the Massey Energy mine explosion, and Toyota's massive vehicle recall. "In each instance, businesses with poor safety records have continued to operate in a system of voluntary regulation," Bass writes.

Last month, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed new "inherently governmental" guidelines, which determine how federal agencies outsource services to private contractors, and asked for feedback from the public on the proposed measures. OMB Watch has collaborated with CREDO Action to spur public participation in the comment process through a petition drive. In addition to advocating for a broader definition of inherently governmental, the comment we suggest for submission targets the outsourcing of certain functions to private security contractors.