A Law In Time: A (web)-step in the right direction

So I come back from my trip and look at the news feed and what do I see? (Besides Gitmo closing which I will blog about soon,) It looks like President Obama is (endorsing) stepping in the right direction to provide transparency to our legislative process. (On a personal note I am slightly upset that Obama is doing all of the things that I was going to do when I am elected president. If he keeps it up I will need to find whole new, smarter things to do. Which is a perfectly fine problem to have.)

What am I talking about? Recovery.gov. The website isn't up yet and the placeholder is in place until the bill passes. If you are interested, the bill is (in PDF form) here. If you would like a blog posting on opencongress.org you can find that here.

So this is a step in the right direction but why is it not enough for Sulum? Well I will tell you. Basically it doesn't go far enough. The bill only affects the money spent from the economic recovery plan. This needs to be implemented for all laws and bills in congress. The biggest thing this provision provides above and beyond what is available with a little muckraking (granted it is yet to be seen how this will be implemented) is the section which states, "The website shall provide materials explaining what this Act means for citizens. The materials shall be easy to understand and regularly updated." This is huge if implemented properly. Maybe they can hire some of the designers laid off in the current round of layoffs and provide a website with a nice interface, easy graphics, and logical navigation. If this is done then I am beyond thrilled.

However I have to say I am not optimistic about the ability of the government to put together a website that is easily surfed. In fact if you look at the house and senate websites you will see how hard it is to do something simple like: find out how your senator voted on a bill by name or description, or see how often your senator voted for bills that originated from a republican senator or from a western senator. These very, very basic data mining queries are absent and the entire congressional record site is absent intelligent design (IMHO). This is basically the genesis and drive for a private project of mine. To provide a more complete way for a person to keep up-to-date on the workings of government in relation to their desires, hopes, and ideologies. But I digress.

What will this website provide that is sorely lacking in the current transparency that the government provides? A key passage is : "...including information about the competitiveness of the contracting process, notification of solicitations for contracts to be awarded, and information about the process that was used for the award of contracts." This means that those contracts for millions of dollars which are usually cost-plus or the like will be able to be reviewed by all people. (I will later discuss the effect of cost-plus on economic activity and why it is a very bad idea.) This will hopefully mean there will be no more 'no bid' contracts awarded, one can hope. It is really hard to award a non-bid contract when the public has the ability to easily review those records.

Now what this section means is open to interpretation. Despite the fact that most bills are hundreds of pages long, most bills are uncomfortably vague on how to implement a significant portion of themselves. If this forces the government to allow the public to review the contract process and raise hell when the process is circumvented then this is a huge step forward. While the average citizen is likely to not read it, those interested or have a stake in the process will and will likely raise hell when the process if corrupted. I may even review some of them if they are related to areas I know a lot about like technology. computers, encryption, Internet, etc.

This bill is still in congress as of today and hopefully this provision does not get cut. President Obama promised a government that works for the people and in a democracy transparency and accountability are critical. The advent of the Internet has made it so that a lot of this information can be disseminated efficiently and the government is way behind the curve in making this happen. This provision, regardless of whether or not you agree with the economic stimulus, should be applauded by all as a worthwhile attempt to bring the government closer to the aforementioned goals.

In the mean time feel free to browse the bailout sleuth for more information about where your money (and your children's money) is going.