February 8, 2016 11:20AM 

# Just Give Us the Data! End-of-Term Org-Chart Edition 

By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) 

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Public oversight of government and internal managment could both improve dramatically with an authoritative, machine-readable representation of what the federal government *is*. Right now, there isn’t a list of all of the federal government’s agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects. That’s a big part of why the government is run so badly and so impervious to change. The government is illegible, even to many insiders.

Happily, the Obama Administration [recently promised](https://www.cato.org/blog/obama-administration-promises-machine-readable-federal-government-organization-chart) to produce a machine-readable federal government organization chart. And it promised to do so in a matter of months. That’s something the administration can do to leave a lasting legacy and fulfill an important part of his promise of more transparent government, something we touted here in a 2008 policy forum, [Just Give Us the Data!](https://www.cato.org/events/just-give-us-data-prospects-putting-government-information-revolutionary-new-uses)

##### Related Tags 

[Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) 

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