Will posting Fed contracts expose sensitive data?

There is plenty of applause for the Obama administration's transparency drive, but there is concern, too, from vendors who think that too much will be pushed online for everyone to see. Some vendors are urging the government to be careful about disclosing corporate or national security information, but there is no formal rule yet on how sensitive the new transparency should be.

"Some companies have told us that they would have to forgo government work if proprietary or competitive data was not protected--at the same levels of protection as [the Freedom of Information Act]--as a result of any publication of contracts," said Trey Hodgkins, vice president for national security and procurement policy at Tech America, an industry group in Washington. He spoke with nextgov's Aliya Sternstein.

Sensitive disclosures could run the gamut from the location of a defense project to the publication of employee names, Hodgkins said. GSA spokeswoman Sahar Wali told nextgov.com that GSA does not intend to post entire contracts on the Internet in the future. "This was a case where there was an extreme amount of public interest ," she said.

The issue has just surfaced and it's far from being resolved. We'll be interested in seeing how the GSA deals with the public's right to know, and the contractor's right to protect proprietary information.

For more on this story:
- check out this nextgov.com article