Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

A great visualization of the impact of sequestration state by state.

And, a post on the process followed to produce the visualization.

The only caveat being that one person read the numbers from PDF files supplied by the White House and another person typed them into a spreadsheet.

Doable with a small data set such as this one, but why was it necessary at all?

Once you have the data in a machine readable form, putting faces in the local community to the abstract categories should be the next step.

Topic maps anyone?

I left off yesterday pointing out three critical failures in the Digital
 Accountability and Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act)

Those failures were:

Digital
 Accountability and Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) [DOA]

Make no mistake, I think transparency, particularly in government spending is very important.

Important enough that proposals for transparency should take it seriously.

In broad strokes, here is my alternative to the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) proposal:

• Ask the GAO, the federal agency with the most experience auditing other federal agencies, to prepare an estimate for:
• Cost/Time for preparing a program internal to the GAO to produce mappings of agency financial records to a common report form.
• Cost/Time to train GAO personnel on the mapping protocol.
• Cost/Time for additional GAO staff for the creation of the mapping protocol and permanent GAO staff as liaisons with particular agencies.
• Recommendations for incentives to promote assistance from agencies.
• Upon approval and funding of the GAO proposal, which should include at least two federal agencies as test cases, that:
• Test case agencies are granted additional funding for training and staff to cooperate with the GAO mapping team.
• Test case agencies are granted additional funding for training and staff to produce reports as specified by the GAO.
• Staff in test case agencies are granted incentives to assist in the initial mapping effort and maintenance of the same. (Positive incentives.)
• The program of mapping of accounts expand no more often than every two to three years and only if prior agencies have achieved and remain in conformance.

Some critical differences between my sketch of a proposal and the Digital
 Accountability and Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act):

Topic maps can play an important role in such a project but we should be mindful that projects rarely succeed or fail because of technology.

Project fail because, like the DATA Act, they ignore basic human needs, experience in similar situations (9/11), and substitute abuse for legitimate incentives.

I started this series of posts in: Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) [The Details], where I concluded the Data Act had the following characteristics:

• Secretary of the Treasury has one (1) year to design a common data format for unknown financial data in Federal agencies.
• Federal agencies have one (1) year to comply with the common data format from the Secretary of the Treasure.
• No penalties or bonuses for the Secretary of the Treasury.
• No penalties or bonuses for Federal agencies failing to comply.
• No funding for the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out the assigned duties.
• No funding for Federal agencies to carry out the assigned duties.

As written, the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) will be DOA (Dead On Arrival) in the current or any future session of Congress.

There are three (3) main reasons why that is the case.

A Common Data Format

Let me ask a dumb question: Do you remember 9/11?

Of course you do. And the United States has been in a state of war on terrorism every since.

I point that out because intelligence sharing (read common data format) was identified as a reason why the 9/11 attacks weren’t stopped and has been a high priority to solve since then.

Think about that: Reason why the attacks weren’t stopped and a high priority to correct.

This next September 11th will be the twelfth anniversary of those attacks.

Progress on intelligence sharing: Progress Made and Challenges Remaining in Sharing Terrorism-Related Information which I gloss in Read’em and Weep, along with numerous other GAO reports on intelligence sharing.

The good news is that we are less than five (5) years away from some unknown level of intelligence sharing.

The bad news is that puts us sixteen (16) years after 9/11 with some unknown level of intelligence sharing.

And that is for a subset of the entire Federal government.

A smaller set than will be addressed by the Secretary of the Treasury.

Common data format in a year? Really?

To say nothing of the likelihood of agencies changing the multitude of systems they have in place in a year.

No penalties or bonuses

You can think of this as the proverbial carrot and stick if you like.

What incentive does either the Secretary of the Treasury and/or Federal agencies have to engage in this fool’s errand pursuing a common data format?

In case you have forgotten, both the Secretary of the Treasury and Federal agencies have obligations under their existing missions.

Missions which they are designed by legislation and habit to discharge before they turn to additional reporting duties.

And what happens if they discharge their primary mission but don’t do the reporting?

Oh, they get reported to Congress. And ranked in public.

As Ben Stein would say, “Wow.”

No Funding

To add insult to injury, there is no additional funding for either the Secretary of the Treasury or Federal agencies to engage in any of the activities specified by the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act).

As I noted above, the Secretary of the Treasury and Federal agencies already have full plates with their current missions.

Now they are to be asked to undertake unfamiliar tasks, creation of a chimerical “common data format” and submitting reports based upon it.

Without any addition staff, training, or other resources.

Directives without resources to fulfill them are directives that are going to fail. (full stop)

Tentative Conclusion

If you are asking yourself, “Why would anyone advocate the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act)?,” five points for your house!

I don’t know of anyone who understands:

1. the complexity of Federal data,
2. the need for incentives,
3. the need for resources to perform required tasks,

who thinks the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) is viable.

Why advocate non-viable legislation?

Its non-viability make it an attractive fund raising mechanism.

Advocates can email, fund raise, telethon, rant, etc., to their heart’s content.

Advocating non-viable transparency lines an organization’s pocket at no risk of losing its rationale for existence.

The third post in this series, suggesting a viable way forward, will appear tomorrow under: Transparency and the Digital Oil Drop.

The Data Transparency Coalition, the Sunlight Foundation and others are calling for reintroduction of the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) in order to make U.S. government spending more transparent.

Transparency in government spending is essential for an informed electorate. An electorate that can call attention to spending that is inconsistent with policies voted for by the electorate. Accountability as it were.

But saying “transparency” is easy. Achieving transparency, not so easy.

Let’s look at some of the details in the DATA Act.

(2) DATA STANDARDS-

‘(A) IN GENERAL- The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, and the heads of Federal agencies, shall establish Government-wide financial data standards for Federal funds, which may–

‘(i) include common data elements, such as codes, unique award identifiers, and fields, for financial and payment information required to be reported by Federal agencies;

‘(ii) to the extent reasonable and practicable, ensure interoperability and incorporate–

‘(I) common data elements developed and maintained by an international voluntary consensus standards body, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget, such as the International Organization for Standardization;

‘(II) common data elements developed and maintained by Federal agencies with authority over contracting and financial assistance, such as the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council; and

‘(III) common data elements developed and maintained by accounting standards organizations; and

‘(iii) include data reporting standards that, to the extent reasonable and practicable–

‘(I) incorporate a widely accepted, nonproprietary, searchable, platform-independent computer-readable format;

‘(II) be consistent with and implement applicable accounting principles;

‘(III) be capable of being continually upgraded as necessary; and

‘(IV) incorporate nonproprietary standards in effect on the date of enactment of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2012.

‘(B) DEADLINES-

‘(i) GUIDANCE- The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, shall issue guidance on the data standards established under subparagraph (A) to Federal agencies not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2012.

‘(ii) AGENCIES- Not later than 1 year after the date on which the guidance under clause (i) is issued, each Federal agency shall collect, report, and maintain data in accordance with the data standards established under subparagraph (A).

OK, I have a confession to make: I was a lawyer for ten years and reading this sort of thing is second nature to me. Haven’t practiced law in decades but I still read legal stuff for entertainment. 😉

First, read section A and write down the types of data you would have to collect for each of those items.

Don’t list the agencies/organizations you would have to contact, you probably don’t have enough paper in your office for that task.

Second, read section B and notice that the Secretary of the Treasury has one (1) years to issue guidance for all the data you listed under Section A.

That means gathering, analyzing, testing and designing a standard for all that data, most of which is unknown. Even to the GAO.

And, if they meet that one (1) year deadline, the various agencies have only one (1) year to comply with the guidance from the Secretary of the Treasury.

Do I need to comment on the likelihood of success?

As far as the Secretary of the Treasury, what happens if they don’t meet the one year deadline? Do you see any penalties?

Assuming some guidance emerges, what happens to any Federal agency that does not comply? Any penalties for failure? Any incentives to comply?

My reading is:

• Secretary of the Treasury has one (1) year to design a common data format for unknown financial data in Federal agencies.
• Federal agencies have one (1) year to comply with the common data format from the Secretary of the Treasure.
• No penalties or bonuses for the Secretary of the Treasury.
• No penalties or bonuses for Federal agencies failing to comply.
• No funding for the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out the assigned duties.
• No funding for Federal agencies to carry out the assigned duties.

Do you disagree with that reading of the Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act)?

My analysis of that starting point appears in Digital
 Accountability 
and
 Transparency 
Act
 (DATA
 Act) [DOA]