Some things I’m thinking about after attending the House appropriations hearing on the GAO budget request:

• Oversight is expensive, and enormously important.  GAO wants to fund a modest staff increase, from 3100 Full-Time-Equivalents (FTEs) to 3275.  They should get more than that; they’re already stretched to do the work their statutorily required to do (which they do, with one notable exception).  GAO prioritizes statutory requirements above committee chairs’ requests, which are above requests from Members.  The acting Comptroller General, Gene L. Dodaro, commented that (paraphrasing): “the requests from Chairs are triaged against the investigations that are statutory requirements.”  This is unfortunate; the oversight work of the country should never be subject to a staffing bottleneck.  GAO work, like the work of agencies’ Inspectors General, should have full financial support from appropriators, and also the appreciation of anyone who doesn’t want to live in a corrupt, wasteful system of government.  The $545 Million GAO is requesting may seem like a lot, but pales in comparison to the money they save the country: they claim that in 2007 the country saw $45.9 billion in resulting benefits. (see page 8 )  I wonder how GAOs work would change if they got a significant budget increase, along with IGs across government agencies.  This would make another blog post, entitled “How do you know when you’ve got a sufficiently large investigative team?

• Thursday’s Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee was in H-144, a small room in the Capitol.  I think I was the only non-staffer there.  There was a GAO crowd of about 10, probably 10 or 15 congressional staff, 4-6 members (going in and out of the room to vote), and Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz.  (I saw only one reporter, who popped in for under ten seconds.) There may have been a handheld recorder on the table; otherwise I didn’t see any recording equipment on the walls of the lavishly decorated hearing room (which has a stunning view looking out at the expanse of the mall.)  Again, I’m struck by the difficulty, if not the impossibility of Members who weren’t present finding out what happened.  Perhaps they sent a staffer to take notes.  They should, however, have access to unedited/unapproved transcripts of what is said, accompanied by archived/embeddable/live-streaming video, as should the public.  Members need this information to do their jobs as legislators, citizens need this to do their jobs as members of civil society.  I know getting video-on-demand for the House and for the public will take a long time to get right, since wiring the rooms with video equipment for recording is still underway.  I also know that whenever this system becomes real, proceedings in committee will gain a new weight and exposure, adding to the substance and oversight of their work.  Maybe then issue expertise and activism can get usefully connected to the procedures of policy creation.

• On the GAO’s requirement to audit the effectiveness of the Personal Financial Disclosure mandates as passed under the (I think) Ethics in Government Act, I’m wondering whether there are similar reporting requirements set up across government that have been forgotten or ignored.  In fact, I spoke with a staffer a few days ago who discovered an unfilled reporting requirement, where the staffers and the agency were largely unaware of the requirement.  Perhaps, maybe, committees should assert their jurisdiction (I know they love to do this) by putting together a list of all of the reporting requirements agencies have under their jurisdiction, and then prepare a document, or make it part of the oversight plan, that says the following: We, the ___ committee, expect the following reports to be submitted to us on the following dates, and Agengy _____ has also agreed to submit them.  Signed, both committee____ and ___agency.  I need to read a few committee oversight plans (I know House Rules require them to be publicly available) to see if this sort of reporting plan is included in the oversight plan.  I’m also told that the Administrative Procedure Act may shed light on these executive reporting requirements.  Surely Financial reporting and oversight happens on a public plan, and analysts plan accordingly.

• Just read through the fascinating oversight plan put out by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; it gave great detail about what they plan to oversee, but offered no listing of oversight documents they’ll be receiving as required by law.  Publishing that list, perhaps within an oversight plan, should add significantly to the value of the oversight documents submitted.

• Drafting legislative language is difficult in a technological context.  The phrasing needs to be both vague enough to maintain its own relevance over time (and new technologies), and, at the same time, needs to be specific enough to mean something.  I suspect that the discussions over the Franking Commission reform need to be redesigned because they were created under a set of assumptions that don’t apply well to the Internet, as it is currently deployed in similar business or political settings. I need to revisit a great conversation I had with Paul at Sunlight, where he gave some great ideas about what franking restrictions should look like.  I’ll have to follow up on the post tomorrow, but I think he suggested that technological issues should regulated if they involve a security risk, and that the other concerns may be best dealt with by the Ethics Committee.  I also suggested the new ethics committee enforce the congressional record inaccuracy issue, too.  Congress needs a functioning enforcement mechanism, and House Rules point to the Ethics Committee.  I hope they take the information auditing aspect of their work seriously; many house rules point to them for enforcement.

• GAO will be auditing lobbying filing requirements, as now required by the HLOGA (s.1). Maybe they’ll do PFDs too, as required maybe both at the same time?

• With NARA apparently suspending its Web Harvest Program, I’m again wondering whether agencies lack guidance they may need in deciding to what degree the new digital aspect of their work should be implemented as part of their core missions.  There are many mistakes institutions can make in confronting a large digital project.  GAO wondered about how to digitize its legislative histories, NARA set up a draft for commentary on their digitizing plans’ including public-private partnerships, the LOC had commentary for their draft report The Future of Bibliographic Control. Are the administrators all aware of the others’ choices?  Are there additional resources or arguments they should hear before making similar decisions?  Would a menu of options, or a collection of stories help?  Should congress clarify the digital aspects of the legislative support agencies’ legislative mandates?  Should they decide on it together, in some advisory body context?  Does an institutional best practices need to exist for digitization and accepting digital content and preservation (and syndicating content) as a part of an institution’s core misison?

(I’m using the “post to blog” feature of google docs for the first time right after I write this sentence, so if anything’s strange, that may be why.)