Watchdog Group Disappointed in Recovery.gov's Data Transparency

The Sunlight Foundation is not please with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's new reporting guidelines for recipients of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

According to a ReadWriteWeb article in The New York Times, the watchdog group is particularly peeved about the lack of raw data.

"By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure."

Author Marchall Kirkpatrick seems to agree with Sunlight's sentiment.

"... when the data being collected from federal recovery fund recipients is made available this October it will be hard to call it transparent if presentation of that data is done entirely by the hand of the government program being scrutinized."