Category Archives: regulatory reform

[FAQ] How do I download a tax transcript from IRS.gov?

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UPDATE: This service was taken offline after IRS security was compromised.

irs-transcriptIn January 2014, the IRS quietly introduced a new feature at IRS.gov that enabled Americans to download their tax transcript over the Internet. Previously, filers could request a copy of the transcript (not the full return) but had to wait 5-10 business days to receive it in the mail. For people who needed more rapid access for applications, the delay could be critical.

What’s a tax transcript?

It’s a list of the line items that you entered onto your federal tax return (Form 1040), as it was originally filed to the IRS.

Wait, we couldn’t already download a transcript like this in 2014?

Nope. Previously, filers could request a copy of the transcript (not the full return) but they would have to wait 5-10 business days to receive it in the mail.

Why did this happen now?

The introduction of the IRS feature coincided with a major Department of Education event focused on opening up such data. A U.S. Treasury official said that the administration was doing that to make it “easier for student borrowers to access tax records he or she might need to submit loan applications or grant applications.”

Why would someone want their tax transcript?

As the IRS itself says, “IRS transcripts are often used to validate income and tax filing status for mortgage applications, student and small business loan applications, and during tax preparation.” It’s pretty useful.

OK, so what do I do to download my transcript?

Visit “get transcript” and register online. You’ll find that the process is very similar to setting up online access for a bank accounts. You’ll need to choose a pass phrase, pass image and security questions, and then answer a series of questions about your life, like where you’ve lived. If you write them down, store them somewhere safe and secure offline, perhaps with your birth certificate and other sensitive documents.

Wait, what? That sounds like a lot of of private information.

True, but remember: the IRS already has a lot of private data about you. These questions are designed to prevent someone else from setting up a fake account on your behalf and stealing it from them. If you’re uncomfortable with answering these questions, you can request a print version of your transcript. To do so, you’ll need to enter your Social Security number, data of birth and street address online. If you’re still uncomfortable doing so, you can visit or contact the IRS in person.

So is this safe?

It’s probably about as safe as doing online banking. Virtually nothing you do online is without risk. Make sure you 1) go to the right website 2) connect securely and 3) protect the transcript, just as you would paper tax records. Here’s what the IRS told me about their online security:

“The IRS has made good progress on oversight and enhanced security controls in the area of information technology. With state-of-the-art technology as the foundation for our portal (e.g. irs.gov), we continue to focus on protecting the PII of all taxpayers when communicating with the IRS.

However, security is a two-way street with both the IRS and users needing to take steps for a secure experience. On our end, our security is comparable to leaders in private industry.

Our IRS2GO app has successfully completed a security assessment and received approval to launch by our cybersecurity organization after being scanned for weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Any personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive information transmitted to the IRS through IRS2Go for refund status or tax record requests uses secure communication channels that meet or exceed federal requirements for encryption. No PII is passed back to the taxpayer through IRS2GO and no PII is stored on the smartphone by the application.

When using our popular “Where’s My Refund?” application, taxpayers may notice just a few of our security measures. The URL for Where’s My Refund? begins with https. Just like in private industry, the “s” is a key indicator that a web user should notice indicating you are in a “secure session.” Taxpayers may also notice our message that we recommend they close their browser when finished accessing your refund status.

As we become a more mobile society and able to link to the internet while we’re on the go, we remind taxpayers to take precautions to protect themselves from being victimized, including using secure networks, firewalls, virus protection and other safeguards.

We always recommend taxpayers check with the Federal Trade Commission for the latest on reporting incidents of identity theft. You can find more information on our website, including tips if you believe you have become the victim of identity theft.”

What do I do with the transcript?

If you download tax transcripts or personal health information to a mobile device, laptop, tablet or desktop, install passcodes and full disk encryption, where available, on every machine its on. Leaving your files unprotected on computers connected to the Internet is like leaving the door to your house unlocked with your tax returns and medical records on the kitchen table.

I got an email from the IRS that asks me to email them personal information to access my transcript. Is this OK?

Nope! Don’t do it: it’s not them. The new functionality will likely inspire criminals to create mockups of the government website that look similar and then send phishing emails to consumers, urging them to “log in” to fake websites. You should know that IRS “does not send out unsolicited e-mails asking for personal information.” If you receive such an email, consider reporting the phishing to the IRS. Start at www.irs.gov/Individuals/Get-Transcript every time.

I tried to download my transcript but it didn’t work. What the heck?

You’re not alone. I had trouble using an Apple computer. Others have had technical issues as well.

Here’s what the IRS told me: “As a web application Get Transcript is supported on most modern OS/browser combinations. While there may be intermittent issues due to certain end-user configurations, IRS has not implemented any restrictions against certain browsers or operating systems. We are continuing to work open issues as they are identified and validated.”

A side note: For the best user experience, taxpayers may want to try up-to-date versions of Internet Explorer and a supported version of Microsoft Windows; however, that is certainly not a requirement.)”

What does that mean, in practice? That not all modern OS/browser combinations are supported, potentially including OS X and Android, that the IRS digital staff knows it — although they aren’t informing IRS.gov users regarding what versions of IE, Windows or other browsers/operating systems are presently supported and what is not — and are working to improve.

Unfortunately, ongoing security issues with Internet Explorer means that in 2014, we have the uncomfortable situation where the Department of Homeland Security is recommending that people avoid using Internet Explorer while the IRS recommends that its customers choose it for the “best experience.”

Given the comments from frustrated users, the IRS could and should do better on all counts.

Will I be able to file my tax return directly to the government through IRS.gov now?

You can already file your federal tax return online. According to the IRS, almost 120 million people used IRS e-file last year.

Well, OK, but shouldn’t having a user account and years of returns make it easier to file without a return at all?

It could. As you may know, other countries already have “return-free filing,” where a taxpayer can go online, login and access a pre-populated tax return, see what the government estimates her or she owes, make any necessary adjustments, and file.

Wait, that sounds pretty good. Why doesn’t the USA have return-free filing yet?

Yes, it does. As ProPublica reported last year, “the concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning PresidentObama.”

As ProPublica reported last year, both H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, have lobbied against free and simple tax filing in Washington, given that it’s in their economic self-interest to do so:

In its latest annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, however, Intuit also says that free government tax preparation presents a risk to its business. Roughly 25 million Americans used TurboTax last year, and a recent GAO analysis said the software accounted for more than half of individual returns filed electronically. TurboTax products and services made up 35 percent of Intuit’s $4.2 billion in total revenues last year. Versions of TurboTax for individuals and small businesses range inprice from free to $150.

What are the chances return-free filing could be on IRS.gov soon?

Hard to say, but the IRS told me that something that sounds like a precursor to return-free filing is on the table.  According to the agency, “the IRS is considering a number of new proposals that may become a part of the online services roadmap some time in the future. This may include a taxpayer account where up to date status could be securely reviewed by the account owner.”

Creating the ability for people to establish secure access to IRS.gov to review and download tax transcripts is a big step in that direction. Whether the IRS takes any more steps  soon is more of a political and policy question than a technical one, although the details of the latter matter.  

Is the federal government offering other services like this for other agencies or personal data?

The Obama administration has been steadily modernizing government technology, although progress has been uneven across agencies. While the woes of Healthcare.gov attracted a lot of attention, many federal agencies have improved how they deliver services over the Internet. One of the themes of the administration’s digital government approach is “smart disclosure,” a form of targeted transparency in which people are offered the opportunity to download their own data, or data about them, from government or commercial services. The Blue Button is an example of this approach that has the potential to scale nationally.

New study details technology deficit in government and civil society

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stem-talent-federal-agenciesThe botched re-launch of Healthcare.gov led many observers unfamiliar with the endemic issues in government information technology to wonder how the first Internet president produced the government’s highest Internet failure. The Obama administration endured a winter full of well-deserved criticism, some informed, some less, regarding what went wrong at Healthcare.gov, from bad management to poor technology choices and implementation, agency insularity and political sensitivity at the White House.

While “Obama’s trauma team” successfully repaired the site, enabling millions to enroll in the health insurance plans offered in the online marketplace, the problems the debacle laid bare in human resources and IT procurement are now receiving well-deserved attention. While the apparent success of “the big fix” has taken some urgency away from Congress or the administration to address how the federal government can avoid another Healthcare.gov, the underlying problems remain. Although lawmakers have introduced legislation to create a “Government Digital Office” and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to reform aspects of federal IT, neither has gotten much traction in the Senate. In the meantime, hoping to tap into the success of the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Services team, the U.S. General Services Administration has stood up a new IT services unit, 18F, which officials hope will help government technology projects fail fast instead of failing big.

Into this mix comes  a new report from Friedman Consulting, commissioned by the Ford and MacArthur Foundations. Notably, the report also addresses the deficit of technology talent in the nonprofit sector and other parts of civil society, where such expertise and capacity could make demonstrable improvements to operations and performance. The full 51 page report is well worth reading, for those interested in the topic, but for those limited by time, here are the key findings:

1) The Current Pipeline Is Insufficient: the vast majority of interviewees indicated that there is a severe paucity of individuals with technical skills in computer science, data science, and the Internet or other information technology expertise in civil society and government. In particular, many of those interviewed noted that existing talent levels fail to meet current needs to develop, leverage, or understand technology.
2) Barriers to Recruitment and Retention Are Acute: many of those interviewed said that substantial barriers thwart the effective recruitment and retention of individuals with the requisite skills in government and civil society. Among the most common barriers mentioned were those of compensation, an inability to pursue groundbreaking work, and a culture that is averse to hiring and utilizing potentially disruptive innovators.
3) A Major Gap Between The Public Interest and For-Profit Sectors Persists: as a related matter, interviewees discussed superior for-profit recruitment and retention models. Specifically the for-profit sector was perceived as providing both more attractive compensation (especially to young talent) and fostering a culture of innovation, openness, and creativity that was seen as more appealing to technologists and innovators.
4) A Need to Examine Models from Other Fields: interviewees noted significant space to develop new models to improve the robustness of the talent pipeline; in part, many existing models were regarded as unsustainable or incomplete. Interviewees did, however, highlight approaches from other fields that could provide relevant lessons to help guide investments in improving this pipeline.
5) Significant Opportunity for Connection and Training: despite consonance among those interviewed that the pipeline was incomplete, many individuals indicated the possibility for improved and more systematic efforts to expose young technologists to public interest issues and connect them to government and civil society careers through internships, fellowships, and other training and recruitment tools.
6) Culture Change Necessary: the culture of government and civil society – and its effects on recruitment and other bureaucratic processes – was seen as a
vital challenge that would need to be addressed to improve the pipeline. This view manifested through comments that government and civil society organizations needed to become more open to utilizing technology and adopting a mindset of experimentation and disruption.

And here’s the conclusion:

Based on this research, the findings of the report are clear: technology talent is a key need in government and civil society, but the current state of the pipeline is inadequate to meet that need. The bad news is that existing institutions and approaches are insufficient to build and sustain this pipeline, particularly in the face of
sharp for-profit competition. The good news is that stakeholders interviewed identified a range of organizations and practices that, at scale, have the potential to make an enormous difference. While the problem is daunting, the stakes are high. It will be critical for civil society and government to develop sustainable and
effective pathways for the panoply of technologists and experts who have the skills to create truly 21st century institutions.

For those interested, the New America Foundation will be hosting a forum on the technology deficit in Washington, DC, on April 29th. The event will be livestreamed and archived.

Can NewsGenius make annotated government documents more understandable?

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Last year, Rap Genius launched News Genius to help decode current events. Today, the General Service Administration (GSA) announced that digital annotation service News Genius is now available to help decode federal government Web projects:

“The federal government can now unlock the collaborative “genius” of citizens and communities to make public services easier to access and understand with a new free social media platform launched by GSA today at the Federal #SocialGov Summit on Entrepreneurship and Small Business,” writes Justin Herman, federal social media manager.

“News Genius, an annotation wiki based on Rap Genius now featuring federal-friendly Terms of Service, allows users to enhance policies, regulations and other documents with in-depth explanations, background information and paths to more resources. In the hands of government managers it will improve public services through citizen feedback and plain language, and will reduce costs by delivering these benefits on a free platform that doesn’t require a contract.”

This could be a significant improvement in making complicated policy documents and regulations understandable to the governed. While plain writing is indispensable for open government and mandated by law and regulation, the practice isn’t exactly uniformly practiced in Washington.

If people can understand more about what a given policy, proposed rule or regulation actually says, they may well be more likely to participate in the process of revising it. We’ll see if people adopt the tool, but on balance, that sounds like a step ahead.

600-x-320-GSA-Mentor-Protege-Program-subpart-519-70-on-cell-phoneWhat could this look like? As Herman noted, Chicago’s SmartChicago Collaborative uses RapGenius to annotate municipal documents.

Another recent example comes from DOBTCO founder and CEO Clay Johnson, who memorably put RapGenius to good use last year decoding testimony on Healthcare.gov.

The GSA’s first use is for a mentor-protege program.

Here’s hoping more subject matter experts start annotating.

[Image Credit: Huffington Post]

U.S. House unanimously votes in favor of FOIA reform and a more open government

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Earlier tonight, The United States House of Representatives voted 410-0 to pass the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act. If the FOIA Act passes through the Senate, the bill would represent the most important update to United States access to information laws in generations.

“Transparency in government is a critical part of restoring trust and the House will continue to work to make government more transparent and accessible to all Americans,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VI). “By expanding the FOIA process online, the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act creates greater transparency and continues our open government efforts in the House.”

The FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act (FOIA), ‪‎H.R.1211‬, is one of the best opportunities to institutionalize open government in the 113th Congress, along with the DATA Act, which passed the House of Representatives 388-1 last November.

The FOIA reform bill now moves to the Senate, which passed unanimous FOIA reform legislation in the last Congress.

As Nate Jones detailed at the National Security Archive, the Senate’s own legislative effort to reform FOIA, the so-called the “Faster FOIA Act” (S.627, S. 1466), was not picked up by the House: the open government bill was hijacked in service of a 2011 budget deal, where the FOIA provisions in it ultimately met an untimely end. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA.), Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL) chose to draft their own bill instead of taking that bill up again.

Open government advocates applauded the unanimous passage of the FOIA Act, although there are some caveats about its provisions for the Senate to consider.

“This vote shows strong congressional support for government transparency and the Freedom of Information Act,” said Sean Moulton, Director of Open Government Policy at the Center for Effective Government, in a statement:

Since its original passage nearly 50 years ago, FOIA has been a cornerstone of the public’s right to know. By modernizing FOIA, H.R. 1211 would improve Americans’ ability to access public information and strengthen our democracy.

We thank the chair and ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who worked with the open government community to develop this legislation in a bipartisan fashion. We urge the Senate to advance legislation addressing these issues and other pressing FOIA reforms, including the need to rein in secrecy claims under Exemption 5, which restrict access to important information about government operations.

Access to public information is crucial to our democracy and the government’s effectiveness. It allows Americans to actively engage in policymaking in a thoughtful, informed manner and to hold public officials accountable for decisions that impact us all.

The bill represents important incremental, improvements to the FOIA process, but “it doesn’t address some fundamental shortfalls in the way that the FOIA is implemented and viewed within the Federal government,” wrote Matt Rumsey, policy analyst at the Sunlight Foundation:

… A “presumption of openness” and improved online infrastructure are important, but the bigger challenge will be getting agencies to change their posture away from one of non-disclosure and often aggressive litigation that is opposed to openness. … It clearly shows that ensuring public access to government information is not a partisan issue, or even one that should divide the branches of government. We hope to see the Senate take up legislation in the near future so that both chambers can work together to send a strong FOIA reform bill to President Obama’s desk for him to sign.

Passage of the House bill is a good first step but only a first step, wrote Anne Weismann, chief counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Without a doubt these are needed reforms. As CREW has long advocated, however, meaningful FOIA reform must include changes in the FOIA’s exemptions to make the statute work as Congress intended.  All too often agencies hide behind Exemption 5 and its protection for privileged material to bar public access to documents that would reveal the rationale behind key government decisions.  For example, the Department of Justice denies every request for a legal opinion issued by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that determines what a law means and what conduct it permits, claiming to reveal these opinions would harm the agency’s deliberative process.  This has led to the creation of a body of secret law — precisely what Congress sought to prevent when it enacted the FOIA.

To address this serious problem, CREW has advocated adding a balancing test to Exemption 5 that would require the agency and any reviewing court to balance the government’s claimed need for secrecy against the public interest in disclosure.  Other needed reforms include a requirement that agencies post online all documents disclosed under the FOIA.  The House bill, however, does not incorporate any of these reforms.

This post has been updated with additional statements over time.

FOIA bill in the U.S. House is one of the best opportunities to institutionalize open government

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U.S. House unanimously voted 410-0 in favor of FOIA reform.

Unless the Congress passes legislation to codify reforms and policies proposed or promulgated under a given administration, the next President of the United States can simply revoke the executive orders and memoranda passed by his or her predecessor.

Today, almost a year after its introduction, the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act (FOIA), H.R. 1211, will go before the U.S. House for a vote. If enacted*, it would commit the reforms to the Freedom of Information Act that the Obama administration has proposed but go further, placing the burden on agencies to justify withholding information from requestors, codifying the creation of a pilot to enable requestors to submit requests in one place, creating a FOIA Council, and directing federal agencies to automatically publish records responsive to requests online.

While these actions were proposed by the administration in its National Open Government Action Plan, Congressional action would make them permanent.

If it passed both houses of Congress and is signed into law, the FOIA Reform Act would carry into law the spirit of President Barack Obama’s Open Government Memorandum of January 21, 2009 and subsequent Open Government Directive, along with Attorney General Eric Holder’s FOIA memorandum: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

The bipartisan bill, cosponsored by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA.), Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL), has received support from every major open government advocacy group in Washington, DC. The released a letter to Congress this week urging the passage of the FOIA Reform Act. The Sunshine in Government and Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council also published letters in support of the bill. It has not, however, picked up a sponsor in the Senate yet.

Currently, 97% of POPVOX users support HR1211. While the bill may not be perfect, very few pieces of legislation are.

“Requests through the Freedom of Information Act remain the principal vehicle through which the American people can access information generated by their government,” said Issa, in a statement last March. “The draft bill is designed to strengthen transparency by ensuring that legislative and executive action to improve FOIA over the past two decades is fully implemented by federal agencies.”

“This bill strengthens FOIA, our most important open government law, and makes clear that the government should operate with a presumption of openness and not one of secrecy,” said Cummings, in a statement.

Given the continued importance of the Freedom of Information Act to journalists and its relevance to holding the federal government accountable, I would urge any readers to find your Representative in Congress and urge him or her to vote for passage of the bill. Improving open government oversight through FOIA reform has been a long time coming, but change should come.

[Image Credit: CREW]

RankAndFiled.com is like the SEC’s EDGAR database, but for humans

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A new website, Rank and Filed, gathers data from the Security and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database, indexes it, and publishes it online in open formats that  investors can use to research and discover companies. I’ve included a screenshot of Tesla’s SEC filings below.

tesla-rank-filed

The site currently has over 25 million files indexed.

I heard about the new website directly from its creator, Maris Jensen, a former SEC analyst who built the site independently. According to Maris, she proposed the project internally in March 2013 but was immediately turned down.

A month later, after she was terminated for threatening the Commission’s mission with a “lack of respect for senior management” — an issue she holds was unrelated to the proposal — Maris decided to make the idea become real independently and started building. She has since offered to give the site and its code to the SEC but has not heard back from them yet.

Our interview, lightly edited for content and clarity, follows.

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Where did the idea for this originate?

The breaking point was realizing that the guy in the cubicle across from me had spent a week writing the same parser as me — a Python program to parse the EDGAR FTP index for specific filings. This is nearly two decades after Carl Malamud set everything up; the FTP index is exactly as he left it. We were in the division responsible for the SEC’s data analytics and interactive data initiatives. The division literally rewrites this program each time they need SEC filings data. There’s no version control. There’s just no excuse!  Hilariously, that guy also left the SEC and built an SEC filings website, though his is for-profit: http://legalai.com/

What does this do that the SEC needed?

In 2008, the SEC set up a task force (the ‘21st Century Disclosure Initiative‘) to rethink the way they were making data available to the public. A year later, they published this report, with their conclusion and proposal for a new, modernized disclosure system.  I basically just tried to build the system they described. I also did lots of googling — ‘SEC EDGAR tool terrible‘, ‘how to find SEC data‘, etc — and then tried to address the problems people were having.

The problems have been the same for decades. In 1994, people wanted a SEC CIK-to-ticker mapping. 20 years later, this question still pops up on forums monthly.

There are over 600 different forms on EDGAR but the SEC’s form lists are basically no help at all. I went through and googled each form individually. I tried to group them into understandable categories.

The comment at the bottom of this post describes the SEC’s current problem better than I ever could:

Has anyone out there ever tried to use SEC.GOV to search for information about a company? The problem is very easy to articulate. If you search for something, you get 5000 results. At about 10 results per page, you have 500 pages to sift through to find what you want. Once you find what you want, there is ZERO ability to navigate from what you found into related documents!

What if you want to research a particular company’s board of directors? What other companies is each director associated with? Have there been any problems in any of those companies? You can’t investigate these types of things using the technology sec.gov has fielded. You want a needle. The SEC gives you a haystack.

Why not allow for better discovery of all of the SEC data and let investors perform their own investigations of markets & companies?

So instead of focusing on this obvious improvement to the public service the SEC provides, the emphasis apparently is on improving investigative actions. Great. Why not just shut off the sec.gov website completely and let the SEC do all of the investigating and researching of SEC data?

How does RankAndFiled.com compare to other sources of SEC data online?

I unfortunately haven’t added that much ‘value’ yet. I’m a total amateur. I’m just trying to make the data available and understandable! The website doesn’t do any analysis: it just collects, links and presents data from different SEC filings.

Looks like you got some great help from the folks you thanked. Did you build this all yourself with these tools?

Yes, open source tools these days are amazing!!  I started this project with no web or software development experience at all.

I actually feel really lucky to have fallen into all of this. Everything I know I learned on google, mostly through tutorials written by the developers listed there.

I also didn’t know anyone in the dataviz or open source community, so I reached out to some of them with stuff like etiquette questions. Their response and support was just incredible — especially the D3 community, they’re just wonderful.

Can you tell me more about where the data on this site comes from and what you’ve done to it?

Basically, the system watches the SEC’s RSS feeds. It reads and indexes data from SEC filings as they come in. Not all the filings show up on the feeds — I’m not sure why — so it also scans the FTP index for any missed filings.

About 25 million SEC documents have been parsed and incorporated so far, which is everything that’s publicly available on EDGAR.  So companies and people are tracked and connected over time — who’s raising money where, who owns whom, who moved companies or got promoted, who sold a ton of shares.  I also realign all the financial data from quarterly and annual reports so you can see a company’s financial history and so the data is comparable between companies.

It actually feels silly even talking about it, because it’s just so basic. This is stuff the SEC should have been doing years and years and years ago.

But its not a perfect science because one, only a few SEC forms are machine-readable and two, the SEC doesn’t even try to standardize names. SEC registrants are given distinct identifiers but anything goes when companies or names are listed inside a filing. Middle names, middle initials, nicknames, suffixes, titles…

What’s next?

I spent November and December trying to give all my code to the SEC. I received no response, not even a polite no. That’s still the goal — I want them to take over and open source it, or at the very least host the underlying API.  It’s their job to make this data available and accessible. They NEED a team over there doing hands-on work with SEC filings, a team struggling to make sense of this data with just the tools available to retail investors, especially now that they’re talking about disclosure reform.  Right now, they have almost no incentive to change things over to structured data — they buy all the structured EDGAR data they need.

The SEC keeps saying that it’s the private sector’s job to build tools like this, not theirs, but in the past 20 years nobody has come up with a really great, really affordable option.  It doesn’t make sense for any of us to even try — I’ve heard that Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters hire legions of Indian professionals to go through each SEC filing by hand.  We just can’t compete.

The SEC will have to make a lot more of their data machine-readable before any ‘disruptive’ innovation can happen, but they won’t do that until they’re forced to (by Congress), unless they have people there who realize how unfair the situation has become.

There are actually a heartbreaking number of SEC employees who also want this to happen, self-described worker bees who’ve reached out to me from personal email to say they’ve been trying to convince their bosses to give this thing a chance.  So far, no luck! I would open source it myself, but unfortunately I can’t afford to host the project indefinitely.

Lawmakers release proposed draft to codify US CTO role, create U.S. Digital Government Office (DGO)

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After months of discussion regarding how the government can avoid another healthcare.gov debacle, legislative proposals are starting to emerge in Washington. Last year, FITARA gathered steam before running into a legislative impasse. Today, a new draft bill introduced for discussion in the United House of Representatives proposes specific reforms that substantially parallel those made by the United Kingdom after a similar technology debacle in its National Health Service.

The draft bill is embedded below.

The subtext for the ‘Reforming Federal Procurement of Information Technology Act’ (RFP-IT), is the newfound awareness in Congress and the nation at large driven by the issues with Healthcare.gov that something is profoundly amiss in the way that the federal government buys, builds and maintains technology.

“Studies show that 94 percent of major government IT projects between 2003 and 2012 came in over budget, behind schedule, or failed completely, said Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), ranking member of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, and co-sponsor of RFP-IT, in a statement. “In an $80 billion sector of our federal government’s budget, this is an absolutely unacceptable waste of taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, thousands of pages of procurement regulations discourage small innovative businesses from even attempting to navigate the rules. Our draft bill puts proven best practices to work by instituting a White House office of IT procurement and gives all American innovators a fair shake at competing for valuable federal IT contracts by lowering the burden of entry.”

Specifically, RFP-IT would:

  • Make the position of the U.S. chief technology officer and Presidential Innovation Fellows program permanent
  • Create a U.S. Digital Government Office (DGO) that would not only govern the country’s mammoth federal information technology project portfolio more effectively but actively build and maintain aspects of it
  • Increase the size of a contract for IT services allowable under the Small Business Act from $100,000 to $500,000
  • Create a U.S. DGO fund supported by 5% of the fees collected by executive agencies for various types of contracts

“In the 21st century, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens,” said Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee, and co-sponsor of RFP-IT, in a statement. “Despite incremental improvements in federal IT management over the years, the bottom line is that large-scale federal IT program failures continue to waste taxpayers’ dollars, while jeopardizing our Nation’s ability to carry out fundamental constitutional responsibilities, from conducting a census to securing our borders. Our RFP-IT discussion draft recognizes that transforming how the federal government procures critical IT assets will likely require bolstering ongoing efforts to comprehensively strengthen general federal IT management practices with targeted enhancements that promote innovative and bold procurement strategies from the White House on down.”

The legislative proposal earned qualified praise from Clay Johnson, former Presidential Innovation Fellow and CEO of the Department for Better Technology, whose advocacy for reforming government IT procurement and fixing the issues behind Healthcare.gov seemed to be on every cable news channel and editorial page last fall and winter.

“This, I think, really works well alongside FITARA, which calls for increased agency CIO authority,” wrote Johnson. “What will hopefully end up happening if both bills pass, is that good talent can get inside of government, and agencies that perform well can operate independently, and agencies that don’t can be pulled back in and reformed, while still having operational continuity (meaning: while that reform is happening, IT projects can still be done well, and run by the DGO).”

In 2014, digital government supports open government. What’s unclear is whether this proposal from two Democratic lawmakers can gain a Republican co-sponsor in the GOP-controlled legislative body or if a federal IT reform-minded Senator like Mr. Carper or Mr. Booker will take it up in the Senate.

This is singular bill isn’t a panacea, however, Johnson emphasized, pointing to the need to fix SAM.gov, the error-prone website for contractors to register with the federal government, and reforms to registration for “set-aside” business.

“We’re not sure how Congress writes a ‘stop throwing errors when a user clicks submit on sam.gov’ law,” wrote Johnson. “That’s going to take hearings, and most likely, a digital government office to fix. And we think this is a bill that complements Issa’s FITARA. Since this bill is at the discussion draft stage, perhaps soon we’ll see some Republicans jump on board.

UPDATE:
 On July 30, RFP-IT was officially introduced. (Full text of the bill, via Rep. Eshoo’s office): “The Reforming Federal Procurement of Information Technology (RFP-IT) Act, introduced by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Ranking Member of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Chairman of the Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Energy Subcommittee, and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.)”

Here’s the quick summary of revised RFP-IT Act:

1) It would officially establish a Digital Government Office within the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), with the U.S. CIO at its head as a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee, reporting to the head of the OMB, shifting from “electronic government” to “digital government.”
2) It would codify the Presidential Innovation Fellows program.
3) It would expand competition for federal IT contracting under a simplified process that would ease the regulatory and compliance burden upon smaller companies bidding, bumping the threshold for information tech projects up to $500,000.
4) Establish a digital service pilot program
5) Direct the General Services Administrator to conduct an in-depth analysis of IT Schedule 70.
6) Direct the Comptroller General of the United States to produce three reports to Congress within 2 years of the law passing, on 1) the effectiveness of the 18F program of the General Services Administration, 2) IT Schedule 70, and 3) “challenges and barriers to entry for small business technology firms.”

United States releases second Open Government National Action Plan

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This morning, the White House released its second action plan (PDF) for improving the state of open government in the United States. The action plan is required for U.S. participation in the Open Government Partnership, an international, multilateral initiative that seeks to push nations to make and keep commitments to open government.

“This second National Action Plan is another opportunity to set concrete and measurable goals for achieving a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government,” wrote Nick Sinai, United States deputy chief technology officer and Gayle Smith, special assistant to the president and senior director for development and democracy, at the White House blog. “We look forward to working alongside civil society to carry out these commitments and continue identifying new ways to open our government in the future.”

open gov nap 2.0

As I previously reported, the action plan commits to modernizing the Freedom of Information Act, open more government data, improve the management of natural resources and engage citizens in innovation. Additionally, the final plan (a draft was released earlier this fall) includes commitments to join the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency  (GIFT), promote participatory budgeting, increase the transparency of spending and foreign assistance, improve the participation of the public in rulemaking and a number of other measures that expand existing commitments.

Initial reactions from open government advocates — many of whom, it must be said, worked to shape the contents of the plan — are strongly positive.

“The United States helped found the Open Government Partnership to challenge other countries to make concrete commitments to make themselves more transparent and accountable to the people,” said Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, in a statement.

“This plan shows that the US is also serious about challenging itself. While we have been critical of some of this Administration’s decisions, particularly its continued insistence on walling off all information related to national security, this plan begins to break down that wall and advance open government.”

Sean Moulton, director of open government policy at the Center for Effective Government, was similarly positive about the plan:

We are impressed by the scope and detail of the plan, as well as the administration’s commitment to continue to engage and refine those commitments for which detailed goals are not yet available. This broad and ambitious plan tackles important open government issues that we have long been advocating, including: 1) strengthening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 2) improving information about government spending, and 3) continuing to open government data to the public. Properly implemented, these commitments can make government openness work for the public and change how government operates. The Center for Effective Government looks forward to working with the administration to ensure the outlined goals are executed over the next two years.

Sunlight Foundation policy director John Wonderlich balanced good with the bad in the plan:

There are some new and meaningful commitments. The proposed FOIA advisory board and committee could be transformative, and commitments to greater transparency in the extractives industry extend the significant new commitments that began in the US’s last plan.

More disappointing are the commitments around spending transparency, which would build on existing efforts to improve federal spending transparency in Congress and the federal government, but but offer only vague commitments. The National Action Plan also outlines a process to ensure federal agencies treat their data as an asset that should be open to the public, (long a Sunlight priority), but without adding much new detail to a process that is already well along its path.

And money in politics, like in the first National Action Plan, is missing entirely.

The measures that are likely to draw the most attention are those that relate to electronic surveillance and national security, and to whistleblower protections.

On that count, the second U.S. national action plan for open government includes measures to increase the transparency of foreign intelligence surveillance activities (largely mirroring the measures President Obama has already introduced this fall and repackaging the commitments made by the intelligence community) and to “strengthen and expand whistleblower protections for government personnel.” I include both below:

6. Increase Transparency of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Activities
In June 2013, the President directed the U.S. Intelligence Community to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive intelligence collection programs undertaken under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), while being mindful of the need to protect national security. Nearly two thousand pages of documents have since been released, including materials that were provided to Congress in conjunction with its oversight and reauthorization of these authorities. As information is declassified, the U.S. Intelligence Community is posting online materials and other information relevant to FISA, the FISA Court, and oversight and compliance efforts. The Administration has further committed to:

• Share Data on the Use of National Security Legal Authorities. The Administration will release annual public reports on the U.S. Government’s use of certain national security authorities. These reports will include the total number of orders issued during the prior twelve-month period and the number of targets affected by them.

• Review and Declassify Information Regarding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Programs. The Director of National Intelligence will continue to review and, where appropriate, declassify information related to foreign intelligence surveillance programs.

• Consult with Stakeholders. The Administration will continue to engage with a broad group of stakeholders and seek input from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to ensure the Government appropriately protects privacy and civil liberties while simultaneously safeguarding
national security.

9. Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protections for Government Personnel
Employees with the courage to report wrongdoing through appropriate, legally authorized channels are a government’s best defense against waste, fraud, and abuse. Federal law prohibits retaliation against most government employees and contractors who act as whistleblowers, and those protections were strengthened by recent legislation and Executive action. However, some who work for the Government still have diminished statutory protections. The Government must also ensure that Federal employees know their rights. Therefore, the Administration will:

• Mandate Participation in the Office of Special Counsel Whistleblower Certification Program. To ensure that Federal employees understand their whistleblower rights and how to make protected disclosures, the Administration will require covered agencies to complete the U.S. Office of Special Counsel’s program to certify compliance with the Whistleblower Protection Act’s notification requirements.

• Implement the Presidential Directive on Protecting Whistleblowers. The U.S. Government will continue to work to implement the President’s October 2012 Policy Directive on Protecting Whistleblowers with Access to Classified Information (PPD-19), including by ensuring strong, independent due process procedures; awareness of protections; and agency understanding of the protections available to government contractors under the directive.

• Advocate for Legislation to Expand Whistleblower Protections. With the Administration’s support, Congress recently enacted legislation to strengthen whistleblower protections for most Federal Government employees and contractors, but there are still gaps in statutory protections available to certain government employees and contractors. The Administration will continue to work with Congress to enact appropriate legislation to protect these individuals.

• Explore Executive Authority to Expand Whistleblower Protections if Congress Does Not Act. While statutory protections are preferable, the Administration will explore additional options for utilizing Executive authority to further strengthen and expand whistleblower protections if Congress fails to act further.

“This is big news in my mind,” writes Nathaniel Heller, executive director of Global Integrity. “Yes, the commitments to greater disclosure around surveillance activities are largely retread and don’t go nearly far enough. But for these issues to have made their way into a US National Action Plan is an important first step towards broadening the open government agenda to include “new frontiers” or “thorny” issues. That’s a big deal and a win.”

As with so many aspects of government announcements regarding measures to hold themselves more accountable or become more transparent, the most important part of this plan will be not be the words themselves but in how they are interpreted and implemented by this administration and those to follow. To date, after bold rhetoric in 2009, the Obama administration’s record on open government is mixed, with ongoing challenges regarding transparency on Healthcare.gov’s performance. There’s also precious little acknowledgment of concerns about press freedoms in the plan. Heller would also have liked to have seen something on corporate ownership:

The administration remains silent on public registries of beneficial owners of companies,” he writes. “Sigh. David Cameron and the UK government made a pioneering commitment to public registries of who really owns UK companies at the OGP summit in London. The US is now in the awkward position of having to defend keeping this valuable data private to only government regulators and investigators. That’s an increasingly thin reed. There’s certainly opposition to public registries in Congress, but the White House could have at least committed to publicly pushing for public registries. Instead, mum’s the word.

Steven Aftergood expressed some concerns about the administration’s new goals on open government, focusing on his wheelhouse, overclassification and pervasive secrecy. As he noted, the plan also includes a measure to improve declassication:

…a new interagency Classification Review Committee is being established with White House leadership to evaluate proposals for classification reform, and to coordinate their implementation throughout the executive branch.  The creation of such a body was the primary recommendation of the Public Interest Declassification Board last year, and it was strongly endorsed by public interest groups.

Both because of its interagency character and especially due to its White House leadership, the new Committee has the potential to overcome the autonomous classification practices of individual agencies that have contributed to the explosive growth in secrecy.

Positive results are naturally not guaranteed.  The Administration has not embraced an explicit theory of how overclassification occurs, or even how overclassification is to be defined, and therefore it is not yet well-equipped to address the problem.

The new Plan notes that in June of this year President Obama directed the Intelligence Community to declassify and make public “as much information as possible” about intelligence surveillance programs. But in an optimally functioning classification system, the President’s directive would have been redundant and unnecessary; the system would already be declassifying as much information as possible.

Of course, the existing classification system is not functioning optimally. That is the problem.  So either the President needs to issue individualized directives to all agencies on every conceivable classified topic to “declassify as much as possible,” or else the new White House interagency Committee needs to find alternate means to effectively communicate the same imperative.

Wonderlich also expressed a deeper concern about the plan: its lack of ambition, focus upon political power and personal investment or commitment of political capital from President Obama.

Unfortunately, if we imagine what a National Action Plan could be with a committed, engaged President, and senior political staff at the White House who discuss and engage with integrity issues, rather than treating them as political liabilities, we imagine a wholly different world. Incremental working groups and vaguely redundant reporting procedures would be replaced by bold proposals that affect political and state power, and we’d see a White House that talks more about the transparency we’re building than the transparency they use as a shield against critics. That’s clearly not the National Action Plan the White House released today.

All that being said, the fact that these measures are in the plan shows that the Obama administration has heard the criticism of civil society regarding secret surveillance laws, overclassification, and prosecuting whistleblowers and included elements addressing them.

That’s better. Let’s see what they do next.

This post has been updated with reactions from  open government advocates over time.

Does privatizing government services require FOIA reform to sustain open government?

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I read an editorial on “open government” in the United Kingdom by Nick Cohen today, in which he argues that Prime Minister David Cameron is taking “Britain from daylight into darkness. Cohen connects privatization to the rise of corporate secrecy … Continue reading →