Government Secrecy Through Privatization

For the past 25 years, a public database has provided to anyone who wants to look information on what government agencies have awarded what contracts to what private companies for how much money. It’s a wealth of information on the workings of the government, provided you’re willing to do a bit of detective work. The White House has approved a deal that would turn over the database to a private company which would charge fees and control access to the information.

MotherJones reports:

In signing the $24 million deal, the Bush Administration has privatized not only the collection and distribution of the data, but the database itself. For the first time since the system was established, the information will not be available directly to the public or subject to the Freedom of Information Act, according to federal officials. "It's a contractor owned and operated system," explains Nancy Gunsauls, a project manager at GCE. "We have the data."

With the compiled database under private control, journalists, corporate consultants, and even federal agencies will be barred from independently searching copies of it. Instead, GCE has pledged only to produce a set of public reports required by the government, and to provide limited access to the entire database for a yet-to-be-determined fee. ... Under the Freedom of Information Act, all records created by federal agencies are available to the public for modest reproduction fee, with a few specific exceptions. By allowing GCE to directly collect contract data from each agency, the Bush Administration has effectively bypassed the Act, because the compiled records are never directly controlled by any government agency.

Experts in federal contract law worry that the new system could cripple public scrutiny of federal contracts. "This is the ultimate metaphor for the administration's view of contracting out," says Paul Light,... "It insulates the process from inspection, which I think is exactly what this administration prefers. They don't want people digging. They don't want people looking." ... Charles Tiefer, a professor at Baltimore Law School who wrote a textbook on contract law, described the change as a political move. "They are covering up," he said. "They are making it more difficult to know that we have less competition."

"It's an insult to the public to tell citizens they must pay to find out the identities of private companies receiving billions of taxpayer dollars," says Dan Guttman... "That's like saying that the public will have to pay to find out the names and phone numbers of its federal officials." ... [T]his is not the first time contractors have been used to restrict public access to information. There is no way, for example, to know who is doing most of the reconstruction work in Iraq, because it is being handled by subcontractors, who never work directly for the taxpayers.

If all of that isn’t scary enough, consider this:

When contacted by a Mother Jones reporter seeking a copy of the data, a GCE representative suggested a one-on-one meeting at the company's offices in Reston, Virginia. "We like to meet with folks and find out how they are using the data to provide a real-time access to the database," Gunsauls explained. She declined to discuss costs over the phone. The first available date she had for an in-person meeting, she said, was two weeks away.

This suggests to me that access to the data could be controlled based upon political decisions — that is to say, some could be denied access to the data because their political or social agendas are deemed “inappropriate” by private owners of information on what our government is doing. And why not? They are a private company after all. I don’t think that there are any laws which require private companies to provide privately owned information to anyone who wants it.

Respectful of Otters notes:

Privatization of governmental functions isn't just a matter of enriching contractors, shrinking the federal government, eliminating federal workers' employment protections, and allowing the government to distance itself from suspect actions - although all of those things are bad enough. Privatization of governmental functions strikes at the heart of democracy by eliminating public oversight of government. We can't hold our government accountable if information about its actions is considered to be proprietary data, owned by a private corporation rather than by the American people.

I completely agree. There has been a tend lately of copyrighting databases of public information, thus turning data that is in the public domain into private works which no one else can copy freely. This is similar, but is in fact much more disturbing. Previous cases have involved telephone numbers (an analogy suggested above, but I don’t think that Dan Guttman realizes just how true it is!), but this case involves the manner in which our government is spending our tax dollars. One important means of private oversight is being lost. How much more can the nation take?

Update: Sgt. Stryker writes about this, noting that similar privatization has been going on for quite a while and probably won’t stop:

I believe that the current privatization efforts will accelerate even more, as the positive side-effects of their use become more apparent to those in power. Civilian contractors aren't bound by the UCMJ. Civilian companies aren't subject to public oversight and inspection. Politicians face new sources of enrichment as Industrial contractors are joined by Service contractors in vying for lucrative contracts in their respective areas. The Executive can pursue certain actions with relative impunity and almost total secrecy while at the same time absolving itself of actions committed by those in the employ of private companies. The military has a ready supply of people who can do things that are impermissable under military and federal law. Almost everyone seems to be making out. Whether the American taxpayer is actually benefitting from this phenomenon is unclear. It doesn't really matter, though. The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote.

I like the Babylon 5 reference, by the way.

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