Following up on concerns about decreased funding for the General Services Administration’s e-government fund, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., has asked the federal chief information officer to detail how this will impact transparency efforts.
In an April 21 letter to Vivek Kundra, Carper expressed his concern for the future of public websites like the ITDashboard, USASpending.gov and data.gov that rely on e-government funds to operate. Lawmakers slashed e-government funding from $34 million to $8 million in the 2011 spending bill.
The dashboard, which updates the public on the performance of major information technology projects, coupled with in-depth reviews of at-risk projects, has saved the administration $3 billion, Kundra has said.
“I remain concerned with how the new lower funding level for the E-Gov Fund might not only impede the progress made thus far to make government more open and transparent, but also harm efforts to cut wasteful and duplicative spending in the federal government,” Carper wrote in the letter.
At an April 12 hearing by the Senate subcommittee on federal financial management and government information, Carper asked Kundra how the Office of Management and Budget is responding to the cuts.
“Given the original request versus where we are right now, we’re still evaluating the implications, but we are going to have to make some tough decisions around which systems are going to have to go offline, versus what can be supported with the $8 million fund,” Kundra replied.
Carper is requesting specific details about what will be affected by the cuts and how OMB intends to use available funding to continue some of the current initiatives.
