On September 24, 2021, President Biden signed the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act of 2021 which requires federal agencies to publicly post budget justification materials on a website. These materials are funding requests submitted to Congress that outline the funds needed to meet program goals, and include detailed financial (funding) information and textual justification information. The legislation states that budget justification materials shall be posted:
“(i) as an open Government data asset;
(ii) in a manner that enables users to download individual reports, download all reports in bulk, and download in bulk the results of a search, to the extent practicable; and
(iii) in a structured data format, to the extent practicable.”
Materials are required to be posted not later than 2 weeks after the date on which the budget justification is first submitted to Congress. The law also requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to maintain an index of each agency that submits their justification and where to access it; and a single data set of the justification data in a structured data format.
The legislation notes that the Director of OMB must establish policies and data standards for agencies no less than one year after enactment of the legislation.
Read the legislation.
