From the House Oversight Manual (via fas.org), it looks like listing required reporting is a recommended part of the oversight process, but isn’t necessarily connected to the “oversight plan”, which is required to be published by the House rules (although perhaps not the Senate, haven’t found that yet). The suggestion to include reporting requirements [...]

In February, the Association of Government Accountants released a report they commissioned Harris Interactive to create, entitiled Public Attitudes Toward Government Accountability and Transprency 2008. The report and corresponding powerpoint presentation explain government’s failure to effectively report on financial management:
“The survey findings reveal that the public perceptions of government accountability and transparency are [...]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently held a hearing on reforming the laws that govern the creation of Federal Advisory Committees.  The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) governs the creation and disclosure of advisory committees.  This is no small legislative or logistical task, since there are about 65,000 people appointed to federal [...]

In a recent Open House Project update post, I mentioned an idea that I’d like to expand on and clarify. My suggestion is this: the House and Senate rules should both be amended to required committees to include agency reporting documents in their oversight plans.
When agencies are created or get jurisdiction, they often [...]

I know, I know–again with the negative GAO stories. I love the GAO, and even suggest they get a much larger budget in a post below. There are only two criticisms I’ve been writing about regarding the GAO: ONE (1) is their apparent non-compliance with their mandate to review Financial Disclosure’s effectiveness, and [...]

To see how far Congress has come online in the last 15 years, check out this flickr set from Chris Casey (who probably made several of these sites).
I particularly like this one, of the original THOMAS in 1994.

From NARA Guidance on Managing Web Records:
Records Schedule - A document describing records of an agency, organization, or administrative unit, establishing a timetable for their life cycle, and providing authorization for their disposition [Society of American Archivists Glossary], i.e., destruction or transfer to the National Archives. (p. 25)
Combine that with this:
There are currently no items [...]

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has called for “all committee roll call votes be posted on their websites within 24 hours in tandem with an easily accessible online database of those votes.”
The Sunlight Foundation is among the signatories, not surprising given the committee chapter of the Open House Project report (or other similar [...]

GAO just released a large report on agency FOIA compliance.  Via the GAO RSS feed.

I’m looking into the way three federal laws relate to each other:
The Federal Records Act, The Administrative Procedure Act, and the E-Government Act of 2002. They seem to all have some bearing on the way federal documents are scheduled, and whether NARA should be archiving copies of them. (Great additional background is available [...]