Criticisms about data inaccuracy in government transparency initiative websites could stem from inaccurate data interpretation, government officials told a House panel March 11.

In particular, an Office of Management and Budget official criticized the methodology of a Sunlight Foundation analysis that found $1.3 trillion worth of misreported 2009 federal grant data on USASpending.gov.

"We do not believe the success rate is as low as the Sunlight Foundation [says]," said OMB Controller Danny Werfel, while speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on technology, information policy, intergovernmental relations and procurement reform.

Werfel cited a Sunlight Foundation finding that while the Agriculture Department actually spent $12.7 billion during fiscal 2009 on school meal programs, USASpending.gov reported only $250,000 worth of school meal spending for that year. 

The discrepancy arose because federal payments worth less than $25,000 don't need to be reported on USASpending.gov, Werfel said, and amounts worth less than the threshold make up the bulk of the meal subsidy program. "That's why there's an absence of information," he said.

Education Department Chief Information Officer Danny Harris said the database used by the Sunlight Foundation to compare USASpending.gov figures--the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance--has a different reporting time frame.

"When you look at the CFDA database and you look at USASpending, the average citizen would expect to see the exact same number in both places," but that's not the case, Harris said.

Government officials did allow that their posted data isn't entirely complete or accurate. Many agencies create public-facing reports manually, "what are sometimes called cuff reports, putting together the reports separately, and therefore it's not as efficient and [the data] is not as reliable," Werfel said.

Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller said most agencies use purpose-built systems for internal management purposes and a separate system for transparency purposes.

"In essence, they maintain two sets of books, one of which is habitually neglected," she said.

Miller testified during a session separate from Wefel's because OMB told hearing organizers it has a longstanding policy against its officials appearing before Congress together with nongovernmental organizations, a stance greeted with skepticism by committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)

"I have been here only going on 11 years, but it is not that long a policy," he said.

Subcommittee Chairman James Lankford (R-Okla.) said transparency initiative websites, also including data.gov, suffer from poor data architecture. "Not only to they lack a common data standard, they sometimes violate even the most basic data standards like separating the state field from the address field, to allow for easy searches," he said.

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage
- watch it on YouTube; first session here, second session here

Related Articles:
Sunlight Foundation finds $1.3 trillion worth of inaccuracies in USASpending.gov 
Report: IT problems are hindering agency transparency initiatives