Sunlight Foundation chides Obama administration on transparency

The Obama administration has failed to live up to many of its promises to open the government, according to transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation.

Sunlight policy director John Wonderlich published an assessment of the administration's progress on transparency Wednesday, one day ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Open Government Directive. In it he calls out agencies for failing to meet goals they set for themselves. "The results are decidedly mixed," wrote Wonderlich, acknowledging that in some cases agencies have clearly met their goals and many planned data sets are now available on Data.gov. "Often, however, agencies have failed to live up to the standards that they set for themselves as a result of the Open Government Directive." As examples Wonderlich notes the Commerce Department failed to post a schedule, the Office of Science and Technology Policy posted only four years of budget data and the Department of Justice failed to publish any of the data identified for public release.