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Cato Video • February 7, 2016 

# What the President Should Do: Transparent Government 

Part of the reason the federal government is so big and wasteful is that there is no consistent account of how it’s organized. There is no authoritative source of information about what all the agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects in the federal government are. But the third National Action Plan for open government, released in October 2015, promises something very special: a machine-readable government organization chart. If it does so consistent with the government organization chart the Obama Administration has promised, that will create a lasting transparency legacy and bring future administrations under stronger oversight so that the size and scope of government can be what the people demand.

“What the President Should Do” is a new series by the Cato Institute discussing what President Obama can do using executive authority his final year in office to make the U.S. a freer and happier place.

More from Jim Harper on transparent government: 
[https://​www​.cato​.org/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​j​i​m​-​h​arper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) 
[https://​object​.cato​.org/​s​i​t​e​s​/​c​a​t​o​.​o​r​g​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​F​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​S​p​e​n​d​i​n​g​-​T​r​a​n​s​p​a​r​e​n​c​y​-​U​n​l​o​c​k​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​P​o​w​e​r​-​o​f​-​A​b​s​t​r​a​c​t​i​o​n.pdf](https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/Federal-Spending-Transparency-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Abstraction.pdf) 
[https://​object​.cato​.org/​s​i​t​e​s​/​c​a​t​o​.​o​r​g​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​F​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​S​p​e​n​d​i​n​g​-​T​r​a​n​s​p​a​r​e​n​c​y​-​U​n​l​o​c​k​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​P​o​w​e​r​-​o​f​-​A​b​s​t​r​a​c​t​i​o​n.pdf](https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/Federal-Spending-Transparency-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Abstraction.pdf)

Produced by Caleb O. Brown, Cory Cooper, and Tess Terrible.

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This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### Featuring 

[![Media Name: harper.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/authors/crops/harper.jpg?itok=I_0322Oq)](/people/jim-harper) 

##### [Jim Harper](/people/jim-harper)

Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

[ 

](https://twitter.com/Jim_Harper) [ 

](mailto:jharper@cato.org)