Report gives Obama failing marks on transparency - Washington Times

Report gives Obama failing marks on transparency - Washington Times Despite promising his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history,” President Obama has lagged in making government information accessible to the public, and been bested when it comes to public access to data by the House Republicans, according to grades to be released Monday by the libertarian Cato Institute. The administration received abysmal grades for “virtually ignoring” a promise to post laws online for five days before the president signed them, for not clearly laying out which offices have what spending authority, and for a test of the Freedom of Information Act in which “19 of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the public disclosure law.” Databases of contracts use an exorbitantly-priced, proprietary system known as DUNS to keep track of companies, making it impossible to tell how much money is flowing to a given company’s subsidiaries without paying up. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress received credit for revamping decades-old systems for browsing legislation online in the 44-page paper by Jim Harper, an expert on how government keeps track of and disseminates information. But when it came to budget documents – the architect of the House Republicans’ budget is vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan – Congress received a D, while the White House got a B-. Read more: Report gives Obama failing marks on transparency - Washington Times http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/3/report-gives-obama-failing-marks-transparency/#ixzz2BC1pao8R Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter