Transparency Websites Hit by Budget Ax

Government transparency websites likely will be scaled back or even eliminated as a result of a 75 percent budget cut that congressional leaders and the White House agreed to last week. The proposed $35 million Electronic Government Fund was slashed to $8 million in the deal struck late last Friday to avert a government shutdown. The e-government fund supports websites such as USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard, which provide public access to vast amounts of information on how the government spends money.

Another transparency site, Data.gov, also is endangered, transparency advocates said. Data.gov offers access to 380,000 government agency data sets as diverse as climate change statistics and export licensing records. The sites are part of the Obama administration's effort to create unprecedented openness in the federal government. But the funding cuts might eliminate some or all of the sites, said Daniel Schuman of the nonprofit transparency advocacy group called the Sunlight Foundation.

"We're trying to find out how much money each site needs to survive," he said. "My best guess is that this is not enough money." Which sites survive may be decided by U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. "The electronic government fund is a bucket of money spent on federal transparency programs at Kundra's discretion," Schuman said. "He will have to make the tough decisions about where to cut."