On April 10th, the United States Senate passed the DATA Act (Digital Accountability & Transparency Act) without objection. The legislation now returns to the House of Representatives, which approved its version of the bill last November with only one dissenting vote. The truly bipartisan DATA Act is expected to make it to the President’s desk for signing soon after the Congress returns from recess later this month.
The bill would require the federal government to comply with new standards for financial disclosure that utilize Structured Data technology, and it would ensure that more and better data is published online. The DATA Act has the potential to usher in a new era of transparency for the U.S. government’s spending of taxpayer dollars.
To date, government spending data has been locked away in archaic form types and inaccessible printed materials. These previously un-searchable documents were not widely or easily available to the public. Leveraging the potential of Structured Data will allow this information to be properly searched and analyzed, and with greatly improved transparency the public and private sectors will be able to work together to eliminate wasteful spending and identify fraud.
By creating financial disclosures with standardized, searchable data, the DATA Act is the first step in helping taxpayers and citizens to track where their dollars are actually going.
Research Data Group and RDG Filings applauds the DATA Act’s congressional sponsors and the Data Transparency Coalition for championing this important legislation.
For more information about the bill, please visit the congress.gov. See more from RDG here.
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