Watchdog: Obama Transparency ‘Disappointing’

A government transparency watchdog, Sunlight Foundation, has given President Barack Obama’s administration very poor marks on making good on its early promise to deliver transparency in government affairs. Foundation executive director Ellen Miller styled 2010 "tremendously disappointing" for transparency advocates and sees more of the same in 2011, according to a Hill report.

"It seems like there's been more promises made than reality delivered and we're disappointed," Miller told The Hill.

Specifically, Miller said the quality of the data sets published on federal transparency websites like Data.gov and the IT Dashboard is lacking, noticing that the data on the sites is too often inaccurate and not very useful.

"Data.gov is really cool except that when you really dig into it, there aren't as many data sets as it looks," she said. "There's general disappointment with the speed at which agencies have put data online."

A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget, however, said agencies have created data quality plans and are currently refining their internal controls to ensure data provided is timely, accurate, and complete.