Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, after the last exchange, I would point out that the Senate now has acted on a very important piece of legislation that has been 2 years in the works, that actually does reflect the ability for us to come together in a bipartisan consensus. So I rise today to discuss the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act--or DATA Act--an important bill that makes sure taxpayers and policymakers can track every dollar the Federal Government spends.

It is pretty unbelievable that in this day and age, we don't have an easily accessible Web site for tracking every Federal tax dollar. Believe it or not, we do not. Instead, we have an incomplete and thoroughly confusing structure of financial reporting which most people can't understand.

I have served in business. I have served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. So I have done business accounting and State government accounting. There is nothing like Federal Government accounting and the lack of standards and transparency.

Our taxpayers deserve to know where their money goes, and it is our obligation to share that information in a clear and direct way. Today, Senator Portman and I, originally, along with Senator Coburn and Senator Carper, rise--and now that the Senate has acted, we are actually taking a giant step to correct that problem and to make sure taxpayers actually get the transparency they deserve.

Since the Federal Government spends more than $3.7 trillion each year, with more than $1 trillion in awards, accurately tracking these funds in a consistent way can definitely be a big job. But the data collected by the budget shops, the accountants, the procurement officers, the grant makers should be combined and reconciled and then presented in a relevant, user-friendly, and transparent way. The various systems should be able to work together based on consistent financial standards so that policymakers and the public can track the full cycle of Federal spending.

In a word, the public should be able to "Wikipedia'' where and how the Federal Government spends its money, and quite honestly, that is what the DATA Act will do.

The DATA Act will make four important improvements that I want to quickly highlight.

First, it creates transparency for all Federal funds. The DATA Act will expand the current site of usaspending.gov to include spending data for all Federal funds by appropriation, Federal agency, program, function, as well as maintain the current reporting for Federal awards like contracts, grants, and loans.

Second--and this is a giant step forward; we are not going to get all the way there--we are starting down this path of setting government-wide financial data standards. We closely monitored the efforts to increase transparency for the Recovery Act funds a few years back, and one reason--even for folks who did not like the Recovery Act--that oversight was successful is because they had consistent standards for reporting the data. Our taxpayers were able to see where the funds and projects were located in their communities.

So the DATA Act requires the Department of the Treasury to establish government-wide financial data standards for Federal agencies so that every term reported is consistent across the Federal Government. This should clearly improve the quality of data.

Too often we see an item appear in one area as a grant and in another area as an expenditure. Trying to sort through what's what is virtually impossible. This part of the DATA Act will help clear that up.

Third, so we do not simply layer on additional reporting requirements without greater accountability, it actually reduces recipient reporting requirements. The DATA Act requires OMB to review the established reporting requirements for contracts, grants, and loans to reduce compliance costs based on these new financial data standards.

I have long been concerned--and I know many of my colleagues on both side of the aisle--about the compliance costs for recipients of Federal funds. Too often a grantee has to report not once or twice but sometimes up to a half dozen times the exact same information. We have seen this in Virginia with many of our universities, such as UVA, where they actually have to report multiple times the same information to multiple agencies.

If all this redundancy were streamlined, recipients such as the University of Virginia or the University of Tennessee could actually direct more money to programs and less to administrative costs.

Fourth, it improves data quality. Under the DATA Act, the inspectors general at each agency will be required to provide a report every 2 years on the quality and accuracy of the financial data provided to usaspending.gov. The GAO will create a government-wide report on data quality and accuracy. Too often the data that is reported at this point does not meet appropriate standards.

We must have a reliable system in place to track Federal funds and compare spending across Federal agencies to get the best value for taxpayers and reduce duplication.

In fact, in the GAO's annual report on duplication released this week, it highlighted the need for better data and specifically called out the limitations. GAO described a "lack of reliable budget and performance information and a comprehensive list of federal programs'' as one of the biggest challenges in addressing duplication.

I know many of the Members, when I started talking about data standards and better accountability, headed for the exists. I recognize this is not a topic that necessarily excites folks. But I see my colleague, the Senator from Tennessee, on the floor--a former Governor, as was I. If we are going to get better value for our taxpayers, we have to start with good data, we have to start with a better ability to monitor that data and follow it.

In a world where people can Google all kinds of information, we ought to be able to follow the money in terms of where our taxpayer dollars head. We ought to make sure the recipients of those taxpayer grants can report that information in a single, consistent, and clear way. Policymakers and taxpayers should be able to assess the value of the dollars we invest in these programs.

This has been a long and winding path. As a relatively new Member of the Senate--and I hear some of the debates about some of the old days in the Senate--I am not sure I was here in the old days. But this is a case where, after a 2-year period, working with Members of the House--Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummings in the House--and working in the Senate with Senator Carper and Senator Coburn--Senator Coburn who is out today for health reasons--and my colleague who joined with me in pushing this bill from day one, Senator Portman--who, if time allows, will get back from a speech to add his comments as well--I would like to thank these Members.

I would also like to thank all of the Senate cosponsors for their support of the DATA Act, including members of our Budget Committee, the Government Performance Task Force that I chair.

I would like to thank in particular Senators Coons, Whitehouse, Ayotte, Johnson, and our Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, and my staff, Amy Edwards, and all the others who have been relentless on working this through with other committees and the administration to make sure we got this bill done.

So while we may not have resolved all the issues of the day, today the Senate acted in a unanimous, bipartisan way to actually provide better value for taxpayers, more transparency, and less bureaucracy. I would say for a Thursday afternoon--with all the other discussion going on--work well done.

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