June 24, 2011 The Honorable Darrell Issa Chairman, Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform United States House of Representatives Washington, D.C. Dear Chairman Issa, We write to encourage your colleagues to support your Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA), H.R. 2146, a bill to create an independent Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board and standardize government data reporting. The White House’s lackluster performance on federal financial transparency has created a complicated maze of reporting websites, which waste millions of taxpayer dollars on redundant data reporting. Indeed, the Chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board recently stated the government spends over a million dollars maintaining twenty five to thirty different accountability portals. The DATA Act rectifies these discrepancies by creating the Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board with the responsibility to establish data standards and present the government’s financial data on a single platform, putting the financial details for every government activity right at the finger tips of the American people. This represents a major step forward in federal transparency—the importance of data coherence and standardized reporting has gone unrecognized for too long and resulted in millions in wasted taxpayer dollars. What’s more, incompatible technologies and incomprehensible datasets make the process of cutting waste, redundancy, and inefficiency out of the federal budget nearly impossible. By unifying competing reporting mechanisms, the DATA Act will enable lawmakers and taxpayers to track every dollar the government spends and target unnecessary spending. Recognition that all government spending should be accessible also constitutes a significant improvement on current transparency efforts. The DATA Act would replace the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which only required reporting of grants and contracts that exceeded $25,000. While we recommend eliminating this threshold for reporting on contracts and grants in the DATA Act, the inclusion of agency expenditures is a welcome and necessary addition to achieve true spending accountability. Thus we encourage your colleagues to support your effort to take transparency in governance to new heights through the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act. Sincerely, Grover Norquist President Americans for Tax Reform Mattie Corrao Executive Director Center for Fiscal Accountability

Cc: All Members of the United States House of Representatives