New social media rules lauded, but advocates note cookie policy omission

New regulations issued on Wednesday aimed at removing obstacles to using Internet-based tools for transparency are long overdue, said accountability groups and privacy advocates, but they pointed out a promised revision to an outdated ban on cookies was conspicuously absent.

In accordance with a December presidential directive, agencies released on Wednesday plans to weave transparency, public participation and collaboration with the private sector into daily operations. The Office of Management and Budget simultaneously released new policies for agencies on using the Internet to meet those goals. The guidelines included a way to allow citizens to more easily follow the rule-making process as well as a clarification of statutory restrictions on interacting with the public that were established before the rise of the Internet. In addition, new reporting rules require agencies by Oct. 1, to start submitting information on subcontract spending, which later will be posted online.

Missing from yesterday's guidance was an expected relaxation of the federal ban on cookies, which track how a visitor navigates through a Web site and use the information to create a more individualized experience for the visitor. OMB presently prohibits the devices on federal sites. Because of privacy reasons, the government barred the use of cookies in 2000, but today many people inside and outside the Obama administration view the policy as an anachronism in a Web-centric society.

Government Web managers, transparency groups, privacy advocates and industry observers questioned on Thursday why the White House was silent on the issue. The December presidential directive ordered OMB to issue clarifying guidance on policies that, for example, pertained to the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act and privacy, by April 7. Rules implementing the Paperwork Reduction Act were explained in one of the policies that exempts many social media exchanges from lengthy reviews.

Vivek Kundra, federal chief information officer, told Nextgov in March that the policy reforms released on April 7 would include cookies. When asked about the discrepancy, an OMB spokesman told Nextgov that Kundra misspoke at the time.

But privacy groups still expected a new policy on cookies. "I'm a little bit disappointed," said Heather West, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It does mean that they missed the deadline to put out privacy guidelines."

She added if the delay indicates the White House is still resolving all privacy concerns, then she would be satisfied. CDT supports the idea of a new framework that permits the use of cookies under specific circumstances.

"While revisions were not required as part of the open government directive, work is well under way to update the cookie policy," said OMB spokesman Tom Gavin. "It is a complex issue, and we want to make sure that our final policy approach strikes the right balance."

The federal community welcomed many of OMB's other reforms. "I don't think any of the OMB memos in and of themselves make significant policy change," said Gary Bass, executive director at OMB Watch, a transparency advocacy group. "They were all important and necessary to do and taken together with the open government plans, the whole effort is significant. I would call that version 1.0."

He said he expects OMB will issue more regulations to expedite open government initiatives. "I've been very impressed with the commitment these people have brought to the issue," Bass said.

Many agency Web developers had interpreted the rules on the Paperwork Reduction Act to mean they must wait several months for approval from the government before seeking insights from citizens through agency blogs, voting tools and other interactive applications. To avoid burdening the public with a mountain of forms, lawmakers in the 1990s required agencies to submit information collection requests to the White House before contacting people. Wednesday's guidance exempts most crowd-sourcing tools, or online forums that seek to harness the collective opinions of citizens to find new ideas.

Agencies were granted the green light to host contests, wikis -- pages that any Web user can edit -- blogs and other online outreach applications regardless of whether the interactions occur on an official .gov site or a third-party platform.

"Information collection can happen without as much bureaucratic review," Aneesh Chopra, federal chief technology officer, explained to reporters on Wednesday. "Agencies now have a lot more running room to embrace these activities without having to wait in some cases months for a review."

But some controls still exist. "If, however, agencies post surveys of any kind, including Web polls and satisfaction surveys that pose identical, specific questions (including through pop-up windows), the [Paperwork Reduction Act] does apply," the guidance states. "These surveys, like in-person, mail or telephone surveys, are subject to the public notice and comment requirements of the [Paperwork Reduction Act] and must have OMB approval before use."

Most open government groups viewed the reforms as a common-sense clarification. "Exempting social media from OMB review is a necessary and important clarification," said Matt Madia, a regulatory policy analyst for OMB Watch. "The [act] requires OMB to review surveys and information collections, but it was written during a time basically before the Internet."

OMB released another policy that is anticipated to offer a clearer picture of the rule-making process. It instructs agencies to tag their proposals with a single identification number throughout the life cycle of a rule. Currently, proposals are hard to find online because they change names and codes as they proceed from the preliminary rule-making phase to the issuance of a final rule.

Madia noted the policy is "pretty short on specifics," adding it lacks practical guidance for the agencies on how to mark and organize the tagged documents.

Separately, new financial rules demand agencies report spending information on recipients of federal subcontracts and subgrants. Starting shortly after Oct. 1, the details will be published on USASpending.gov, a site authorized under a law co-sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama to track all federal awards.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who co-sponsored the legislation, complained the site has failed to follow the law. The information it warehouses is often incomplete and inaccurate, according to reports by the Government Accountability Office.

When USASpending launched in December 2007, it displayed data only on primary recipients of federal funding. That effort took more than a year to complete. Wednesday's guidance gives agencies half that time to identify and submit the harder to find data on secondary recipients.

The administration sometime later this spring will overhaul USASpending.gov to expand the site to accommodate the new data. OMB officials have not specified a relaunch date.

Agencies likely will report the subaward information to an inbox at USAspending.gov/reporting. OMB plans to leverage existing systems such as FederalReporting.gov, the data submission portal for stimulus recipients. Some of the data fields will be filled out automatically for agencies when they log on to the new reporting site. The goal of prepopulating the entries is to ensure data consistency. By December, agencies must meet new requirements for system architecture, including equipment modifications and testing.

"The federal spending transparency [guidance] is useful in finally getting to the point of complying with the law," Bass said.

Agencies might find it difficult to track down the secondary financial figures, but this new approach should improve data quality because the agencies -- not the subrecipients -- will report the data, he said. It might be easier to reconcile the differences between numbers from agencies, primary recipients and secondary recipients, according to Bass.