Administration Releases Framework for Spending Data Quality

On Friday, the White House met another Open Government Directive deadline by issuing a framework for federal spending data quality.  The framework requires that agencies submit plans by April 14 for improving quality of their spending data, implementing internal controls and process changes.  

Current challenges that need to be addressed such as missing data, duplicate data, and inaccurate data.  The new policy is meant to meet some of these problems, but it doesn’t do so as completely or thoroughly as it might have.  For instance, it doesn’t allow for independent data quality verification whether from inspectors general or by comparing the data to the Treasury Department’s disbursements.

According to the policy, OMB is to monitor progress through “potential” dashboards that will be publicly available.  However, it doesn’t promise to make agency data quality plans public.  How can we know how well the data verification process is if we don’t have the plan?  Regardless, this is a positive step forward to ensuring consistency in data reporting.

Once the plans are received, OMB will provide initial feedback by April 30 and work with agencies to develop final plans which are due on May 14.  Although the framework states that portions of the plans will be used to monitor agency implementation, they do not mention any mechanism to be provided to the public to report data and implementation problems.

 

 

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