After unanimously passing the Senate in a vote on April 10th, the DATA Act (Digital Accountability & Transparency Act) was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives on April 28th. The bill will next be sent to the President for signing into law.
RDG joins all proponents of government transparency nationwide in thanking the DATA Act’s lead sponsors Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) for championing this important legislation. We are also grateful to the Data Transparency Coalition and other groups who have worked so hard to push this bill through.
The law will require the federal government to comply with new standards for financial disclosure that utilize Structured Data technology, and it ensures that more and better data is published online. The DATA Act will usher in a new era of transparency for the U.S. government’s spending of taxpayer dollars. Structured Data will allow government spending information to be properly searched and analyzed, and will facilitate the elimination of waste and fraud.
Structured Data is the future of financial reporting, and it is already in wide use by public companies worldwide in the form of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
The DATA Act will open the government’s spending information and set the stage for meaningful spending reform. By creating documents with standardized, searchable data, this law is a huge step forward in the honest tracking of government expenditure.
