Feds: We need tools to meet transparency law

Federal IT officials doubt that agencies can enforce the Obama administration's accountability and transparency rules as they spend funds allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to a survey that will be released on Monday. The majority of respondents - 62% - said either that they don't know if agencies can enforce the ARRA transparency requirements (33%) or they don't believe agencies can meet these rules (29%). States scramble to track federal stimulus bucks The survey was commissioned by Serena Software, a provider of business process modeling software that sells tools designed to meet specific federal regulations. Only 38% of respondents said they believe federal agencies can enforce the transparency requirements of ARRA, according to an e-mail survey of 200 defense and civilian agency IT officials. It was conducted in September.

Three-quarters of respondents said their agency had put a medium-to-high level of importance on reaching transparency goals. Survey respondents agree that meeting ARRA's transparency goals is important. Meeting these requirements will take time, survey respondents said. Another 31% believe they could meet the requirements within a year, and 27% believe they can meet the requirements within two years. Less than half of survey respondents - 43% - said they believe their agencies could meet the transparency requirements today.

Agencies say they need new automated tools to meet the transparency rules. Half of the 64% said they have funds available in their budget to purchase these tools. More than half of respondents - 64% - said they could benefit from automated tools. A lack of automated tools to meet transparency rules may be one reason that federal agencies are taking their time to award ARRA funds. Only 11% of survey respondents said their agency had obligated or spent more than 80% of their ARRA money. "We've been working with federal agencies on process automation, transparency and accountability issues since before the new administration came into office," says Dave Dantus, federal director for Serena Software. "We had a strong suspicion that there was a gap between what [the Office of Management and Budget] and the administration were expecting and what agencies were able to deliver in terms of reporting and transparency." Dantus said that a significant number of agencies are using e-mail and spreadsheets to meet ARRA transparency rules, rather than automated tools such as those provided by Serena. "It's not easy to track or report on ARRA funds with e-mail and spreadsheets," Dantus says. "Certainly, this is an opportunity for our company." Serena Software is a privately held software company with $300 million in revenues.

More than half of the survey respondents - 51% - said their agency had obligated or spent less than 20% of their ARRA funds. The company's Business Mashups software allows users to quickly automate processes without having to write software code. Dantus says Serena Software has more than 200 federal customers that use its software to comply with regulations regarding information assurance, financial controls and requests for information.