[Ecommerce] Groups Push For Online Access To Details On Federal Contracts

[Manon Ress]

National Journal's Technology Daily
May 17, 2002
http://nationaljournal.com/pubs/techdaily/

E-Government 
Groups Push For Online Access To Details On Federal Contracts
by Maureen Sirhal 

Consumer advocates and policy organizations are tossing their support
behind an initiative that would require certain government contracts to
be made publicly available online. 

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is spearheading an
initiative that would compel federal agencies to routinely post
contracts on the Internet. Proponents say the move would bolster
transparency and accountability for government agencies and their
contractors while also increasing the public's ability to easily access
government documents. 

Ralph Nader of Public Citizen and James Love, director of the Consumer
Project on Technology, have been leading proponents of the effort since
1999. On Friday, several organizations -- including the Heritage
Foundation, Federation of American Scientists and Consumer Federation of
America -- reiterated their support for the idea in a letter to OMB
Director Mitchell Daniels. 

Currently, statistics in federal contracts are available through the
General Services Administration's Federal Procurement Data System
(FPDS). But as part of President Bush's Management Agenda and
e-government initiatives, OMB has begun to reassess that information. 

"We have in process an initiative to re-engineer the existing FPDS,
which should result in a wealth of additional data being made available
to the public," Daniels wrote in a November letter to Love and Nader. He
added that specific contract-award information would be available in
FPDS. But the two consumer advocates wanted OMB to work toward a policy
that would compel agencies to post all federal contracts online. 

"We generally agree that it was something we wanted to do," said Angela
Styles, OMB's administrator for procurement policy, "but we had trouble
thinking through how to do it." Posting agreements online creates
"considerable concerns" among contractors about the availability of
proprietary information, she said. 

Some agencies already post contracts online, but incremental steps are
being taken to require firms to provide redacted versions of sensitive
contracts, eventually leading to the online availability of all federal
contracts. 

"What we've said is that they should put on the non-redacted parts of
the contracts," Love said. "If [the government] has a contract with
someone to manage a student-loan program, it's not a national security
matter. There is a public interest in the public being able to see
what's in those contracts." 

Citizens already can access such documents via the Freedom of
Information Act, but Love said it is so slow that it is a "major
deterrent." 
     
Leftover funding in a federal procurement executive council has been
allocated to build an online system similar to that of the Defense
Department, which will host some contracts, Styles said. Eventually, the
system will allow all contracts to be posted, but for now, Styles
emphasized that the process must be incremental. 

Defense contracting is a major concern, said Steve Aftergood, a project
director with the Federation of American Scientists. "It affects our
entire military force structure," he said, "and it's a politically
loaded subject. ... "[T]he more information that is available in the
public domain, the better." 
     
Love said an April meeting with White House officials signaled a "high
level of interest" in the initiatives and served as an indication that
things are moving forward.