Oversight Committee Advances Legislation to Increase Accountability in Federal Program Performance

WASHINGTON, DC – The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today approved legislation – H.R. 3262, the Government Results Transparency Act (GRTA) – to increase federal transparency and strengthen taxpayers’ ability to hold government accountable for the performance of federal government programs. GRTA will make federal agencies’ reports on program performance easier for taxpayers and government watchdogs to search and analyze by establishing consistent data standards and identifiers across the federal government, applying the same open government principles to agency performance that Chairman Darrell Issa’s Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) applies to federal grants, loans and contracts. DATA wasapproved by the Oversight Committee in June.

“The American people have a right to accurate and accessible information on how every penny of their money is spent by the federal government,” said Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH), who authored the accountability legislation. “That means being able to trackperformance and spending together, electronically, for every federal program.”

Click Here to Watch Rep. Guinta on H.R. 3262 During the Legislative Markup

By law, taxpayers have a right to track the performance of federal programs. Agencies are already required to describe their program activities, goals, and results in periodic performance plans and reports. To make these performance plans andreports more useful, GRTA ensures that they will be consistently organized using machine-readable data formats. GRTA also requires the government to match performance data with spending data on a program-by-program basis. GRTA is a crucial step towards protecting taxpayers’ right to know what they get from their government.

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