Opensource Government to remain Classified?

Certainly the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 is a step in the right direction for promoting transparency of funding initiatives by U.S. Govt. The last real effort made in this area was in 1982 when the then Reagan administration, in the wake of Iran Contra was forced to create the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a means of curtailing CIA funding of covert initiatives outside of appropriate scrutiny.

Essentially , the majority of government funding is already reported via Annual Reports including grants contracts etc. that are deemed unclassified i.e. not subject to classification level. The FFAT Act then provides an opportunity for closer and more accessible public scrutiny via an online searchable database i.e. who's receiving what?

What is interesting to note is the difference between the bill as originally introduced and as finally adopted by the U.S. Senate. specifically provisions relating to classification: As introduced it was Section 2(B)(1)(b)(III) which excluded the reporting on “a grant or contract of a nature that could be reasonably expected to cause damage to national security.”This was removed and instead was re-created as Section 3 Classified Information which states: “Nothing in this Act shall require the disclosure of classified information.”

The question here becomes: Classified as what? Classified Information in most western governments is any information that is assigned a level of classification. Types of classification includes In-Confidence, Protected, Highly Protected, Secret and Top Secret.

To place this in perspective; in Australia the then State Premier of Victoria Jeff Kennett was accused of introducing a veil of commercial in-confidence into public oversight on the grounds that to disclose this information could leave contract recipients open to damaging scrutiny by their competitors.

Whether the new FFAT Act results in wholesale attempts by parties to see their information receive even the lowest classification in order to remain invisible remains to be seen. However, my concerns are that the present legislation has the potential to provide holes of funding information where allocation of funds still remains hidden within the overall budget framework and therefore beyond easy scrutiny.

An alternative and potential amendment to the legislation might be to require Govt. entities to report along the following lines:

1/. Total amount of funding allocated regardless of classification
2/. Total amount of funding allocated by each classification level below Secret
3/. Totals and descriptions of funding of an unclassified nature

The above amendments would at a minimum provide an indicator of the funding a Govt organization was keeping from the public eye without compromising or identifying the nature of that funding. Simply put, there can be no accountability if there is no information.