Government Executive

Unlocking government data is no easy feat, and according to recent survey data gathered by the Government Business Council, the chief obstacles to a more open government are familiar problems in the IT world.

The survey tallied responses from 75 civilian and military IT leaders (GS-14 or higher), and respondents identified concerns over data sensitivity (68 percent), a perceived lack of funding (62.5 percent), privacy (61.1 percent), and unstandardized data (59.7 percent) as the chief challenges to more open data in government.

GBC conducted the survey in part to ascertain how the government would act to Congress’ passing of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which mandates the executive branch publish US federal spending in open, standardized datasets readily available to the public. The DATA Act gives agencies more incentive to push appropriate data into the public eye, and it was preceded by a May 2013 executive order that spurred agency efforts to lay the groundwork for making open, machine-readable datasets the default in government.

The GBC survey suggests agencies may have made strides on some of the steps outlined on the Open Government Dashboard, and less on others one would think should have come first.

The Federal Trade Commission has the power to sue companies that fail to protect their customers' data, a federal court in New Jersey said.

The ruling shoots down a challenge from Wyndham Hotels, which argued that the FTC overstepped its authority with a 2012 lawsuit against the global hotel chain. The decision by US District Court Judge Esther Salas is a major win for the agency. If the court had sided with Wyndham, it would have stripped the federal government of oversight of data security practices just as hackers begin to pull off more and more high-profile attacks.

Judge Salas said her decision "does not give the FTC a blank check to sustain a lawsuit against every business that has been hacked," but that she must follow the "binding and persuasive precedent" to uphold the agency's authority. The FTC is currently investigating Target over the massive hack that exposed information on 40 million credit cards.