January 11, 2012 2:31PM

There’s No Machine‐​Readable Government Org Chart

By Jim Harper

At a recent Cato event on transparency, I emphasized that there is no federal government “organization chart” published in a way computers can use.


Here’s what I mean:


Appendix C of the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A‑11 is the White House’s definitive public listing of agencies and bureaus, along with their OMB and Treasury codes — unique identifiers for the agencies and bureaus of the federal government.


First problem: It’s a PDF document. To be computer‐​usable this should be represented in digital form as a lookup table.


But beyond that, it doesn’t follow a coherent organization. There’s an agency code (“200”) called “Other Defense Civil Programs,” for example. There’s obviously no agency called “Other Defense Civil Programs.” That’s a catch‐​all description, not an agency.


With most agencies, the bureau codes refer to bureaus, such as the Bureau of Land Management (bureau code: “04”) in the Department of the Interior (agency code: “010”), but with respect to the Department of Defense (agency code: “007”), the bureau codes become functional descriptions such as “Military Personnel” (“05”). There is no bureau in the Department of Defense called “Military Personnel.”


Even the most basic organizational information is a hash, and it’s published in PDF, unusable for computer‐​assisted oversight of the government!


The House appears committed to improving its publication practices. If the administration wants to advance the ball on transparency for its part, it will begin to publish coherent information — starting with basic information about the organization of the executive branch — in machine‐​readable form, using standardized identifiers. An edict from OMB to harmonize on identifiers down to the program level could be implemented in months, if not weeks.


My recent paper “Publication Practices for Transparent Government” talks about what to do. Our data model for budgeting, appropriating, and spending articulates how government agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects — and the relationships among them — should be represented.