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At a recent Cato event on transparency, I emphasized that there is no federal government “organization chart” published in a way computers can use.
Here’s what I mean:
Appendix C of the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-11
is the White House’s definitive public listing of agencies and bureaus,
along with their OMB and Treasury codes—unique identifiers for the
agencies and bureaus of the federal government.
First problem: It’s a PDF document. To be computer-usable this should be represented in digital form as a lookup table.
But beyond that, it doesn’t follow a coherent organization. There’s
an agency code (“200″) called “Other Defense Civil Programs,” for
example. There’s obviously no agency called “Other Defense Civil
Programs.” That’s a catch-all description, not an agency.
With most agencies, the bureau codes refer to bureaus, such as the
Bureau of Land Management (bureau code: “04″) in the Department of the
Interior (agency code: “010″), but with respect to the Department of
Defense (agency code: “007″), the bureau codes become functional
descriptions such as “Military Personnel” (“05″). There is no bureau in
the Department of Defense called “Military Personnel.”
Even the most basic organizational information is a hash, and it’s
published in PDF, unusable for computer-assisted oversight of the
government!
The House appears committed to improving its publication practices.
If the administration wants to advance the ball on transparency for its
part, it will begin to publish coherent information—starting with basic
information about the organization of the executive branch—in
machine-readable form, using standardized identifiers. An edict from OMB
to harmonize on identifiers down to the program level could be
implemented in months, if not weeks.
My recent paper “Publication Practices for Transparent Government” talks about what to do. Our data model for budgeting, appropriating, and spending articulates how government agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects—and the relationships among them—should be represented.
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