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Sunlight Foundation chides Obama administration on transparency
The Obama administration has failed to live up to many of its promises to open the government, according to transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation.
Sunlight policy director John Wonderlich published an assessment of the administration's progress on transparency Wednesday, one day ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Open Government Directive. In it he calls out agencies for failing to meet goals they set for themselves.
"The results are decidedly mixed," wrote Wonderlich, acknowledging that in some cases agencies have clearly met their goals and that many planned data sets are now available on Data.gov.
"Often, however, agencies have failed to live up to the standards that they set for themselves as a result of the Open Government Directive."
As examples Wonderlich notes the Commerce Department failed to post a schedule, the Office of Science and Technology Policy posted only four years of budget data and the Department of Justice failed to publish any of the data identified for public release on Data.gov.
Sunlight has previously criticized the Obama administration for failing to live up to the president's promises of transparency, with executive director Ellen Miller telling Hillicon that 2010 was a "tremendously disappointing" year for the transparency community in March.
Wonderlich suggested the disappointment was the result of a failure of execution and follow-through.
"We should remember that Presidential rhetoric and bureaucratic commitments are not the same thing as results, especially as even more administration work happens through broad, plan-making executive actions and plans," he said.
"Transparency proclamations are valuable, but the path to transparent government runs through a thousand fights over information. The [Open Government Directive] may have moved the default slightly towards openness, but it doesn't win those fights alone."
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