This suggestion was forwarded here in reference to this blog post.
Financial Transparency
Congressional Budget Justifications
Every year each agency releases a congressional budget justification. This contains useful information about how the agency intends to make use of its funding. Under OMB Circular A-11 22.6(c), each agency is required to make its justification available to the public (including posted on the Internet) within two weeks after transmittal to Congress.
All these budget justifications should be centrally housed on OMB’s website along with all the other budget materials. It is often difficult to find agency congressional justifications on their websites. Moreover, many people are unaware of the existence of the justifications in the first place. Even GPO, apparently, is unaware of the justifications (see this), as it does not gather them along with its publication of other budget materials.
Budget justifications should be published in a format in addition to PDF, such as TXT or DOC. PDF format makes it virtually impossible for computers to make use of the underlying information. For example, if you wanted to compare this year’s justification against last year’s by tracking the changes, you would be unable to do so when dealing with a PDF. OMB already publishes data in alternative formats to facilitate public use (specifically XML and CSV), and it makes sense to publish text in a format that can be analyzed as well. Recent appropriations legislation requires OMB to publish this information in a central location and we look forward to its implementation.
This suggestion was forwarded here in reference to this blog post.
Financial Transparency
Congressional Budget Justifications
Every year each agency releases a congressional budget justification. This contains useful information about how the agency intends to make use of its funding. Under OMB Circular A-11 22.6(c), each agency is required to make its justification available to the public (including posted on the Internet) within two weeks after transmittal to Congress.
All these budget justifications should be centrally housed on OMB’s website along with all the other budget materials. It is often difficult to find agency congressional justifications on their websites. Moreover, many people are unaware of the existence of the justifications in the first place. Even GPO, apparently, is unaware of the justifications (see this), as it does not gather them along with its publication of other budget materials.
Budget justifications should be published in a format in addition to PDF, such as TXT or DOC. PDF format makes it virtually impossible for computers to make use of the underlying information. For example, if you wanted to compare this year’s justification against last year’s by tracking the changes, you would be unable to do so when dealing with a PDF. OMB already publishes data in alternative formats to facilitate public use (specifically XML and CSV), and it makes sense to publish text in a format that can be analyzed as well. Recent appropriations legislation requires OMB to publish this information in a central location and we look forward to its implementation.