Sunshine week is drawing to a close in Washington, DC. This annual event highlights efforts to get better access to government information. But it also reminds us that while nice, sunshine doesn’t help much if you aren’t there to enjoy it. We have to demand more than just data to really let the sunshine in. Data must be usable and understandable. And we have to demand that Congress play the leading role in using transparency to establish real accountability. 

We applaud all the efforts we see to increase the amount of data the government provides citizens, and the work that citizens do to use that data to help bring key information to the attention of the public and the press. And let us be perfectly clear that we do want more and better data than what we are getting. For example, we would love it if Congress put Taxpayers for Common Sense out of the earmark database business by providing the public with comprehensive, user-friendly and accurate earmark data in real time. 
 
But beyond the data, we need Congress to step up its game in oversight and accountability.  Audits from agency Inspectors General, Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports, watchdog analyses, whistleblower complaints – all of this is just whistling in the wind if lawmakers don’t take it up, investigate the facts and hold government accountable. This is hard work, it’s not just a photo op or stem-winding speeches during hearings.
 
Taxpayers can ill afford Congress treating an administration of the same party with kid gloves. We saw that for years when the Republicans had control and President Bush was in office. We cannot go down the same path with Democratic control and President Obama. Though occasionally painful, oversight and accountability actually helps the administration.  Members of Congress often wax poetic about how the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse, with that power comes the responsibility to make sure that once dollars go out the door, we not only know what happens to them, but we do something when we see things going wrong.
 
The list of missed opportunities and resulting waste is long. It took years of fighting to get a commission to investigate wartime contracting through Congress. The GAO has a 200-page report of ten years worth of recommendations to stop Medicare fraud that have yet to be implemented. Lawmakers still haven’t held previous administrations accountable for failed audits and botched contracting programs:  Coast Guard cutter acquisition, US-VISIT, Census Bureau, Corps of Engineers projects, overseas military construction, crop insurance abuses. All of these issues have been the subject of hearings, but Congress has to do more than wag fingers and flap gums at these problems. Agencies, programs and contractors have to be held to account. On the flip side, we were pleased to see, DHS Secretary Napolitano talking about pulling the rug out from under Boeing on SBInet, a costly failure that has long needed some strong discipline.
 
It’s good that there’s a week set aside to focus on moving information out of the shadows and into the light. But the real work has to occur the other 51 weeks of the year – taking that information and turning it into action and accountability. It is high time for Congress to step into the light.

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