By Joe Newman

At a time when online innovation and technology are playing an increasing role in government accountability comes the disturbing news that funding in these areas could all but vanish in next year's budget. According to Daniel Schuman in the Sunlight Foundation blog, the e-government programs are on the chopping block.

Gone is the $34 million investment the Obama administration was planning to put into a fund that pays for initiatives such as Data.gov, Recovery.gov and USASpending.gov. That Electronic Government Fund has been whittled down to $2 million in the House budget and the proposed Senate budget.

While those online tools aren't perfect and have come under fire recently, that is no reason to shove the open government movement back into the last century. Do the programs need oversight? Yes, but that doesn't mean they should go away. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. As Schuman writes:

The returns from these e-government initiatives in terms of transparency are priceless. They will help the government operate more effectively and efficiently, thereby saving taxpayer money and aiding oversight. Although we have significant issues with some of these program’s data quality, and we are concerned that the government may be paying too much for the technology, there should be no doubt that we need the transparency they enable. For example, fully realized transparency would allow us to track every expense and truly understand how money -- like that in the electronic government fund -- flows to federal programs. Government spending and performance data must be available online, in real time, and in machine readable formats.

The last thing we need is for Congress to turn its back on what has been a bipartisan effort (then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, co-sponsored the legislation that created USAspending.gov) at bringing government accountability into the 21st Century.

Joe Newman is POGO's Director of Communications.