Sunlight Foundation chides Obama administration on transparency

{mosads}”Perhaps most egregiously, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded part of their plan to post a schedule for new data to be released, and released a new version of the plan scrubbed of that milestone,” Wonderlich added.

Sunlight has previously criticized the Obama administration for failing to live up to the president’s promises of transparency, with executive director Ellen Miller telling Hillicon that 2010 was a “tremendously disappointing” year for the transparency community in March.

Wonderlich suggested the disappointment was the result of a failure of execution and follow-through.

“We should remember that Presidential rhetoric and bureaucratic commitments are not the same thing as results, especially as even more administration work happens through broad, plan-making executive actions and plans,” he said.

“Transparency proclamations are valuable, but the path to transparent government runs through a thousand fights over information. The [Open Government Directive] may have moved the default slightly towards openness, but it doesn’t win those fights alone.”