The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

New DATA Act Would Make Following the Money Easier

Just before Congress left D.C. for the campaign trail, Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) reintroduced a bill to overhaul federal fiscal accountability. The new Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) is a trimmed-down version of the original bill introduced in the Senate by Warner and in the House by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), S. 1222/H.R. 2146. We applauded when the House unanimously passed it in April, and speculated that it could revolutionize fiscal accountability.

But since then, concerns about some of the more substantial structural reforms in the bill were raised by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The new DATA Act addresses those concerns while still proposing much-needed improvements to the tools we have for tracking how taxpayer dollars are spent. 

Right now, it’s a mess. No one—I mean no one in government or outside—has a clear, comprehensive, or accurate picture of how the federal government spends money. It’s like that old Indian fable about the blind men (us) and the elephant (federal spending). USAspending.gov, created by the Obama-Coburn “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006,” was a good beginning, but it has failed to streamline spending data or ensure its accuracy.

Deja Vu--Again--for Whistleblowers

Last week, there was another big push in the 14-year effort to upgrade protections for federal workers who blow the whistle on waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality. On Friday, the last day before Congress broke for the elections, we and our allies in Congress were working on a miracle—we tried to move the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA, S. 743, as amended) through both chambers with passage by unanimous consent. It was a heroic effort by the very committed cosponsors of the bill, their staff, and our allies, but in the end, there wasn’t enough time. Again.

Last week’s emails and calls to Members of Congress and letters of support almost pushed it over the finish line. By Friday morning we learned the bill was expected to pass the House by unanimous consent around noon, and that the Senate was poised to follow suit. We were truly thrilled! But it was a short-lived victory dance, as bumps developed in this all-too-familiar road. We heard a lot of things about what happened to derail the bill, including that House Speaker John Boehner had decided not to pass any bills by unanimous consent on that last day before breaking for the elections (in fact, they didn’t) and that the “intelligence community” had concerns about parts of the bill—parts that, in fact, were no longer in the bill! In the end, we were told that the last minute issues could not be resolved in time. Just as in years past, an unforeseen obstacle arose at the eleventh hour, and Congress failed to pass the bill.

But the fight isn’t over yet.

POGO Cheers MSPB for Granting Stay for Whistleblowers

The Project On Government Oversight applauds the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for defending U.S. Army whistleblowers who may have suffered retaliation for exposing the truth about their supervisor’s illegal actions.

The MSPB found reason to believe that these employees got serious payback for blowing the whistle, allegedly including harassment, loss of pay, and constructive removal (intentionally making working conditions difficult so the employee feels forced to leave his or her job). On September 6, the MSPB granted the 45-day stay requested by the OSC, providing temporary relief for the affected individuals who remain federal employees, while the OSC continues their investigation.

In this case, six employees of the Army Substance Abuse Program at Fort Richardson, Alaska (three psychologists, a social worker, a licensed counselor, and an administrative assistant) blew the whistle on their supervisor, Terry Bates. They jointly reported to the Joint-Base ombudsman that Bates was “knowingly falsifying, removing, and or/destroying clinical patient records.” These six individuals were brave to come forward. Their protected disclosures point to serious illegality that goes beyond victimless misconduct. The ombudsman recommended an investigation, and Bates’s supervisory and clinical responsibilities were temporarily suspended.

New Podcast: Just How Secret is the Government?

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

How many secrets does the government have? And where are they keeping them? POGO's Joe Newman and Suzie Dershowitz sat down with Amy Bennett from OpenTheGovernment.org, which just released its annual Secrecy Report, to discuss how secret the federal government was last year.

Find out what agency takes three years to process certain FOIA requests and which agency known for being secretive supposedly only classified four new documents last year. Find the podcast below.

• Listen to the latest podcast (or right click and save as to download)

• Subscribe to POGO podcasts via RSS
• Subscribe to POGO podcasts via iTunes (and don't forget to leave us a rating)
• Previous podcasts

Andre Francisco is an online producer with the Project On Government Oversight. Image by Pam Rutter.

Follow @andrefrancisco

One Year Into the Open Government Partnership

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

One year ago this week, the global Open Government Partnership was launched, and along with it the U.S. detailed their plan for a more open and transparent federal government.

In a new blog post, our friends over at OMB Watch give the highlights of an OpenTheGovernment.org report on what parts of the plan have been implimented and what areas still need work.

For instance, following up on the plan's commitment to modernize policies for managing government records, President Obama issued a well received memorandum in November 2011, which was followed by a directive with specific requirements in August.

...

Progress in other areas is wanting. For example, the plan promised that agencies would provide more information on their regulatory compliance and enforcement activities, as originally called for in a January 2011 memorandum. But few agencies have published their plans for doing so.

The administration will be releasing their own sel-assessment in early 2013, and after the initial transparency goals are met, the U.S. is supposed to form another plan for further improvements. Read the whole blog post over at OMB Watch.

Andre Francisco is an online producer for the Project On Government Oversight.

Follow @andrefrancisco

The Sequestration Sideshow: Jobs and Pentagon Contracting in Context

This week another major defense contractor used its employees as political pawns in its campaign to halt planned reductions in Pentagon spending.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday “Northrop to shed nearly 600 jobs.” The article includes all of the industry’s talking points about “budget uncertainties,” “jobs lost,” and “more cuts,” and even uses the erroneously high $600 billion amount for defense sequestration (the correct amount is $492, as ProPublica’s critique of media using the $600 billion figure illustrated). Unfortunately, the article not only overstates the actual amount of Pentagon sequestration by more than $100 billion, it also fails to put Northrop’s job-shedding into context. For those interested in a little more balance in their sequestration news, here are a few facts to mull over before jumping on the contractor “doomsday” bandwagon.

First, Northrop has reduced its workforce every year since 2008, cutting thousands of workers every year during a time in which its Department of Defense contract dollars remained fairly constant. Employment figures from its SEC filings for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 chronicle this downsizing. Northrop wasn’t the only defense contractor to cut jobs either. In the past five years the top five defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon—collectively cut nearly 20,000 jobs while their contracts from the DoD increased by more than $10 billion. In short, if there is any connection between revenue and employment it has, at least recently, been in the opposite direction that Northrop would have us believe.

Report Shows Suspensions and Debarments On the Rise

On Tuesday, the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee (ISDC) released its annual report to Congress on the status of the federal suspension and debarment system. Twenty-seven federal agencies and departments (accounting for 98 percent of all federal contract spending) reported a total of 5,838 suspensions, proposed debarments, and debarments in fiscal year 2011. This is a 39 percent increase over FY 2010 and a 119 percent increase over FY 2009, the years covered in last year’s report.

That the Department of Defense (DoD) had the most actions in FY 2011 isn’t surprising, considering DoD awarded 70 percent of all federal contract dollars that year. Somewhat more surprising are the numbers reported by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM): 794 proposed debarments, 765 debarments, and 4 suspensions. The first two totals seem grossly out of proportion for the relatively tiny OPM, which awarded .28 percent of all federal contract dollars in FY 2011. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Social Security Administration (SSA) both reported goose eggs: zero suspensions, proposed debarments, debarments, and administrative agreements. Judging from the table in Appendix 2 of the report, NRC and SSA have the least comprehensive suspension and debarment policies and practices of all the agencies.

The Department of Commerce finally got with the program last year and established a suspension and debarment office. According to the ISDC, its five actions were the first Commerce has undertaken “in at least 15 years.”

Federal Agencies Lagging on FOIA Processing-What's the Hold Up?

When the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at the Justice Department released its Summary of Agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports for 2012 and subsequently published its Summary of Annual FOIA Reports for FY 2011 a couple weeks later, POGO reviewed both assessments closely. We applaud the nine federal agencies (out of the 99 subject to the Freedom of Information Act in FY 2011) that earned top marks on their FOIA program, meeting all seventeen milestones included in the Chief FOIA Officer Reports Summary. However, POGO was disappointed to see some particularly sluggish FOIA processing performances from others.

Here’s a little background: In 1996, Congress passed the e-FOIA amendments (H.R. 3802), strengthening requirements for agencies to ensure timely responses to requests. To avoid prolonged delays for simple requests, Sec. 7 authorized multi-track processing. This means agencies can (and should) process simple and complex requests at the same time on separate tracks based on the amount of work or time involved—instead of on a “first-in, first-out” basis.

The Chief FOIA Officer Reports Summary provided statistics on the average number of days it takes each agency to process a simple request—one that does not involve unusual or exceptional circumstances. OIP clarified for POGO that they are tracking when an agency has provided a substantive response to the requester, not just a response, such as an acknowledgement letter. So these stats represent how long it takes (simple) requesters to actually get the information they are seeking. Sixty agencies in the OIP assessment processed the requests within an average of 20 working days or less. But twenty-seven agencies had a simple track and still failed to meet that requirement. While many of those agencies’ averages hovered just above 20 days, a few were shockingly high.

The Chief FOIA Officer Reports Summary indicated that it takes the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on average seven times longer to process a simple FOIA request than the 20-day legal limit for simple requests.

It takes State, for example, an astounding average of 155 days to process a simple request. When POGO asked why, a State Department spokesperson told us:

It's Time, Right Now, to Pass Whistleblower Protections

We’ve learned that the House and Senate cosponsors of the bills to strengthen protections for federal whistleblowers and taxpayers have reached an agreement and will offer the strongest version of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) they think they can pass this week.

The window for passing this good government bill is extremely narrow. We urgently need you to write your representatives today, and tell them that they must pass critical whistleblower and taxpayer protections before they leave Washington.

This bipartisan bill (read our summary here) certainly does not have every reform we have sought, but has many critically important upgrades to the broken system for whistleblowing.

Let Congress know this is an important issue with broad support. So far, 168 organizations with more than 40 million members and diverse ideologies and interests have signed on to an open letter to Congress in support of the WPEA. In addition, conservative taxpayer groups have thrown their support behind this bill.

Click here now to tell Congress to pass these whistleblower protections before they hit the campaign trail!

Image from Flickr user afagen.

An earlier version of the post had a link to a letter from whistleblowers, but it was removed because we were informed that "the open letter demands more than Congress is willing to pass at this time."

Bipartisan House Bill Would Expand Whistleblower Protections to Federal Contractors

The Project On Government Oversight applauds Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Todd Platts (R-Pa.) for introducing the bipartisan Non-Federal Employee Whistleblower Protection Act (H.R. 6406), an important bill that could save billions of taxpayer dollars. POGO has always supported granting strong whistleblower protections to all federal contractors and grant recipients of federal funds, and this bill would do just that. In April, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) companion legislation S.241, cosponsored by Senators Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and we are glad to see House members following McCaskill’s lead.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that up to $60 billion was lost in Iraq and Afghanistan due to waste and fraud, most of which was the result of questionable contracting. To stop this kind of gross waste in the future, would-be whistleblowers need to feel safe coming forward speaking out against the misuse of federal funds.

A House of Pentagon Pork

Today the House of Representatives will send a strong message to America (er, rather, to their campaign contributors): It will still be business as usual at the Pentagon, and insane profits made from taxpayer dollars will still be up for grabs.

This afternoon, the House will vote on two bills that together would increase Pentagon spending beyond what it requested and prohibit the Pentagon from reshaping the military to meet 21^st Century threats, which is necessary to make us safer, stronger, and support the troops.

The National Security and Job Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), is a proposal to eliminate sequestration, the congressional mechanism to automatically reduce government spending by more than $1 trillion. While West’s bill doesn’t say precisely how sequestration should be replaced, it takes Pentagon spending off the table. The bill explicitly prohibits “reductions to direct spending for the defense function.”

Lockheed Campaign Cash Has Flowed to Members of House Panel Probing F-22 Problems

By JACOB WASHKURAK, JOHN PARKER and BEN FREEMAN

When members of a House subcommittee convene today for a hearing on the troubled F-22 stealth fighter, they’ll have more in common than just an interest in the mysterious symptoms that caused some pilots to declare the plane unsafe to fly earlier this year.

All but one of the 25 subcommittee members have received contributions in the current election cycle from individuals or political action committees associated with Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the F-22, according to a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The one exception, Pennsylvania Republican Todd R. Platts, is retiring from Congress. In a 2010 op-ed piece, he said that as always his campaign was being funded solely by contributions from individual citizens and that he refused to accept contributions from special-interest groups. There are no records of his ever having accepted any funds from employees of Lockheed Martin during his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The other subcommittee members received between $1,000 and $10,000 each, for a total of $153,250, according to the POGO analysis (see table below).