The Office of Management and Budget's guidance on implementing the president's March 20th memo regarding communications with lobbyists is being criticized as still too restrictive. According to The Hill, "the guidance has not lessened the worries of the coalition of groups that have campaigned against the restrictions."

CREW's concerns remain the same after reading the memoranda. The policy is still both unnecessarily restrictive and under-inclusive at the same time. Only meetings with lobbyists will be disclosed — not meetings with those who would otherwise hire lobbyists," said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director.

In any case, communications between lobbyists and agencies are beginning to appear online as required by the White House memo. Each agency varies, some do not reference lobbying contacts at all while the Corporation for National and Community Service states that no contacts have taken place. According to the Sunlight Foundation, only eight out of the twenty-eight agencies have a list of lobbyist contacts. There are multiple inconsistencies between the agencies. For example, the Department of Energy refers to lobbying contacts as "interested parties." The Department of Transportation listed "lobbyist correspondence" under which a March 25 memo was previously posted, even though it was dated June 25, 2009. However, visiting the site today (April 17) there is no sign of any lobbyist related communication. It would be even more convenient if you didn't have to go to each agency's individual site to look for this information. Given only a handful of information is being reported, has there been a chilling effect? Are non-registered lobbyists meeting with agency staff? Or are the agencies just slow to act?