Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

There was no objection.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, substantially the same bill was passed in the previous Congress. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or the DATA Act, is an important piece of legislation in that it will create the opportunity for government to be more efficient, more effective, and more transparent.

The American people deserve real accountability in how the taxpayer dollars are spent, now more than ever. It is unacceptable for Federal spending on data currently to be so inaccurate, unpredictable, inconsistent, and, quite frankly, expensive.

Nobody can follow the money at the Federal level these days, in spite of the fact that we spend over $82 billion on IT. Political gain is often had or lost every time a major program funding proves to lead to a dead end. Whether it is a billion-dollar program for the Department of Defense or, now, the most current challenge, the one faced in healthcare.gov, it is often easy to point fingers.

But, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to handle large data in a way in which we get predictable success rather than inevitable failure, we have to start by demanding that data be structured from the day it is created and formatted in a way that makes it capable of search, aggregating, downloading in bulk, and manipulating, both for the benefit of insiders trying to find accountability and outsiders legitimately exercising their right to know how government is spending their money.

The DATA Act will contain a pilot to examine ways to consolidate and streamline reporting requirements. This will decrease the burden of Federal financial reporting for agencies and for States, school systems, and other recipients of Federal dollars.

We found, during the Recovery Act, that the Recovery Board, using DATA Act-type transparency, was able to find huge amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse and do it in a transparent way in real-time because they required recipient reporting.

Recipient reporting, in a perfect world, would already have taken place; but we recognize that consolidating and improving the way in which data is compiled needs to come first. Therefore, between the pilot in this bill and, in fact, the requirement that we begin structuring data the way the SEC and other agencies have will, in fact, make this legislation a money saver for the Federal Government.

The DATA Act is bipartisan and bicameral and widely supported. A companion legislation was introduced in the Senate by Senator Warner and Senator Portman. Their legislation is substantially similar and will be easily made into a consolidated bill, one the American people can have confidence in, was thought of over multiple Congresses, well vetted, and, in fact, assure the American people that we will not make, in the next Congress and in Congresses beyond, some of the mistakes that have been made in the past.

With that, I ask for early consideration of this version of the act and would note that we passed out of our committee unanimously, and by voice, not just in our committee, but in the last Congress, a bill substantially similar.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume in closing.

I want to thank the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, and particularly note that this has been one of those shining, shining examples of bipartisan behavior by the committee and, I suspect, the entire Congress.

I might note that earlier this month the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted unanimously to pass the Senate version of this act, so upon our passage, we will very shortly be in an opportunity to begin making these kinds of changes, and I look forward to that. I look forward to this kind of legislation in the future.

I urge all Members to vote positively on this fundamental reform, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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