I saw President-elect Obama pledge “unprecedented transparency” regarding his new economic stimulus plan yesterday.
According to Mr Obama, his Administration is planning a Google-like search function to show every program funded by the stimulus package, whether it comes in under or over-budget, whether it is meeting its intended purpose and how many jobs it is creating.
Better transparency and accountability is what we all want so this should be good news, right? Well, I hope so but I am worried that the incoming Administration will create something that cosmetically looks like a massive step forward but in reality only has a short-term effect. As I mentioned yesterday the passing of a stimulus package and the accountability and transparency that is demanded to go with it, provides a chance to oblige state and local agencies to put in place the (IT) infrastructure to make all of their spending data transparent – not just that relating to the stimulus package. Some of the work needs to be pushed to the agencies themselves – make them change the way they do things today so that they are forced to change for everything.
The Washington Post’s Kim Hart, blogged yesterday about Obama’s appointment of a Chief Technology Officer and speculation that Vivek Kundra could be the chosen one. She also wrote a good article about Kundra. PublicSpend supports Kundra as the best choice. He is well versed in state and local government and knows that agencies are less than enthusiastic about making their data transparent. But he knows it can be done because he is making it happen in the District of Columbia.
Unprecedented transparency is great but let’s make sure it goes far enough and is done the right way. Perhaps Kundra is the man that can make it happen. Rumor is that a CTO announcement will be made this week.
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