House Financial Services Committee Continues Four-Year Campaign to Eliminate Most Open Data on Corporate Finance
For over four years, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee have been trying to pass a bill that would prevent the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from collecting searchable financial data from most public companies. Fortunately, it is probably never going to become law. But why are the biotech industry and the Financial Services Committee leadership so fixated on the Small Company Disclosure Simplification Act?
This week Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (NC-5-R) and Congressmen Jimmy Gomez (CA-34-D), Mike Quigley (IL-5-D) and Derek Kilmer (WA-6-D) introduced the Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency (GREAT) Act (H.R. 4887). The Data Coalition, the nation’s only open data trade association, endorsed the bill.
We’ve just released our 2018 Policy Agenda - our plan for the reforms that will turbocharge the data transformation this year.
Though transparency and evidence communities are immersed in data and policies to encourage greater data access and use, they seem to speak different languages. Now their objectives are joined in common legislation that advances both causes, the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2017 (FEBP Act) (HR 4174).
Today, the Senate passed the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, championed by Senators Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Brian Schatz (D-HI).
Today the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act (S.760; H.R. 1770), as championed by Senators Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Brian Schatz (D-HI), was incorporated into a package of amendments (S.Amdt.1003) representing the final negotiated Senate FY18 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (S. 1519; H.R. 2810). 
Senior federal leaders are currently responding to a rare policy opportunity to address persistent structural management challenges in federal agencies. A new report published this week explores these policy opportunity. 
On Tuesday, June 13th, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin testified before the House Appropriations Committee in defense of the Treasury Department’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Budget request (see the request here). Mnuchin’s testimony showed an opening to standardize data fields and formats across the nation’s overlapping financial regulatory regimes - just as the Data Coalition has already been recommending to Congress.
Last week the White House released President Trump’s first proposed budget. We read it, and we figured out what it means for federal technology and the implementation of the DATA Act, so you don’t have to.
Congressman David Brat (R-VA) and Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) have reintroduced the Statutes at Large Modernizations Act (SALMA), H.R. 1729. If enacted, SALMA would put all historical federal laws online in a machine-readable, open data format.