January 11, 2012 2:31PM # There’s No Machine-Readable Government Org Chart By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE At a recent [Cato event on transparency](https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=8643), I emphasized that there is [no federal government “organization chart”](https://www.cato.org/government-spending-transparency-%E2%80%98needs-improvement%E2%80%99-is-understatement/) 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](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/a11_current_year/app_c.pdf) 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](https://www.cato.org/house-transparency-slated-to-improve/). 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](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13701)” talks about what to do. Our [data model for budgeting, appropriating, and spending](http://wac.0873.edgecastcdn.net/800873/blog/wp-content/uploads/Budget.html) articulates how government agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects—and the relationships among them—should be represented. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).