Info released under Obama transparency order is of little value, critics say

Transparency advocates and good-government groups rendered a mixed verdict this week on the Obama administration's recent release of hundreds of sets of government data, arguing that many federal agencies chose to release obscure or outdated facts and figures at the expense of long-standing requests for more relevant, sensitive information.

As part of the administration's efforts to make the government more transparent, President Obama ordered federal agencies last month to select at least three of their "high value" sets of statistics or other information to publish in a downloadable format at the government's http://data.gov Web site. Transparency advocates cheered the president's decision and eagerly anticipated last Friday's release. Federal agencies met Friday's deadline, and information first surfaced on the Web site at the height of the evening rush period. The Department of Health and Human Services posted its annual summary of Medicare Part B spending, information it previously sold on CD-ROMs for $100. The Transportation Department provided information on child seat safety and tire quality, the State Department formatted its history of U.S. foreign relations and the Executive Office of the President published the history of economic forecasts. But some agencies published only partial information on government contracts, and others selected obscure data of interest to only a few academic researchers.