Public Data and Websites

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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State Group Launches Government Transparency Wiki

On Aug. 11, the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions in Columbus, OH, announced the creation of its Center for Transparent and Accountable Government. With the mission of promoting open government initiatives at the federal and state levels, the center is leading the effort in Ohio to provide access to state and local government information and enable user participation in government through its wiki.

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FedSpending.org Reaches 10 Millionth Search; Additional Data Now Available

WASHINGTON, July 29, 2008—In June 2008, the groundbreaking FedSpending.org website reached another milestone — the site saw its 10 millionth search by a person since its launch in October 2006. In that time, FedSpending.org has grown to process more than 1 million searches from approximately 400,000 unique visitors each month. On July 1, Alexa.com ranked FedSpending.org 32,259 in traffic among websites on the Internet.

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House Decides Saving E-mails is a Good Thing

The White House has threatened to veto an already weak bill targeted at preserving electronic records, despite legal action and recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the need for such accountability. On July 9, the House passed the Electronic Communications Preservation Act (H.R. 5811) by a veto-proof margin of 286-137. While targeted at the White House, this legislation will have an impact throughout executive branch agencies.

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A Failure of Access, a Shortcoming of Technology

Access to government data and other information often falls behind expectations due to the government's failure to use advanced technologies to meet the needs of modern day society. In "Hack, Mash, & Peer," Jerry Brito, Senior Research Fellow of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, discusses the shortcomings of government access and technological solutions to create broad access to government records.

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OMB Reports $508 Million in E-Gov Savings; Congress Remains Doubtful

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report to Congress Feb. 14 that calculates the benefits of President Bush's 24 E-Government (E-Gov) Initiatives at approximately $508 million in Fiscal Year 2007, based on agencies' estimates. Congressional skepticism of the Initiatives, and subsequent reluctance to fund them, led OMB to develop a questionable funding mechanism using agency contributions from their annual budgets.

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OMB Watch Updates Data, Features on FedSpending.org

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2007—Today, OMB Watch released the latest updated version of FedSpending.org, including new data for FY 2006 and FY 2007, additional search functionality, greater accessibility for people with disabilities, and patches and upgrades for reported bugs. The site now contains contracting data through the second quarter of FY 2007 and federal assistance data through the first three quarters of FY 2006.

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Key Components of The E-Government Act of 2001

OMB Watch's analysis of the key components of the E-Government Act of 2001

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Congress, Constitutents, Content Online

There appears to be considerable variance between what constituents want and what Congress needs, according to two reports on congressional websites released this year. The Congress Online Project's November 2001 report and the Advocacy Group's February 2001 report provide a useful balance of perspectives around public attitudes and expectations towards individual member websites, and ways these potentially valuable resources can be improved.

The Advocacy Group

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E-Mail Advocacy: Will It Get Heard on the Hill?

Electronic advocacy today carries some great benefits. In particular, we can now witness the breaking down of geographic boundaries as a factor in delivering messages to elected officials and policymakers. This in turn reduces the time and cost involved in sending correspondence. Newer tools now make it possible to efficiently generate a high volume of personalized, customizable, and targeted communications with relative ease.

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Community Technology Centers: Collaborations That Work

There are well over 2,000 Community Technology Centers (CTCs) and related community technology projects that provide a range of technology services to low-income, minority, and hard-to-serve populations across America. Often a community technology effort does not carry the label of a CTC, even though they provide CTC-type services in urban and rural communities. Libraries, schools, and nonprofit organizations that play a key role in our communities coordinate many community technology efforts. Often the building which houses a community technology center serves as the focal point of community activity, a center for learning and workforce preparedness, a showcase of community collaborations among businesses, government and nonprofit and civic organizations. The number of new programs has been increasing exponentially as communities recognize that access to technology is a key to economic empowerment, workforce competitiveness, and community building.

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