Must read: MotherJones: Public Information, Private Profit?

"Established by an act of Congress in 1979, the Federal Procurement Data System was a rare island of public information, the only complete record of federal contracts. Using the database, journalists, auditors and federal investigators could review the million or so agreements with corporations Uncle Sam signed each year. They could find the companies reaping the largest awards, track the rise in no-bid deals, and measure the recent drive to replace federal employees with corporate employees. But under a new contract, the General Services Administration has now turned over responsibility for collecting and distributing information on government contracts to a beltway company called Global Computer Enterprises, Inc.
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.
"It seems that something quite inappropriate has been done here," says Angela Styles, who served until last year as President Bush's chief procurement official, noting that Congress requires the government to compile and share this information. "They have ceded their responsibility."
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, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has used the procurement database for his own work. "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." Similarly, 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."
A federal official close to the contracting process admits that all users -- even those seeking limited access -- will probably pay more. Just how much more is unclear, as the pricing structure has yet to be established. Under the agreement, GCE can sell unlimited access to clients on an individual basis for "market value." But Paul Murphy, president of the private consulting firm, Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., says a GCE representative told him he would have to pay $35,000 for data he once got for about $1,500. . . .
In fact, the new system appears designed to virtually eliminate unfettered public access. 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. Drabkin, who has already rejected such requests for the data, says the public can still get access to the raw information by approaching each individual agency.
"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, an expert in federal contracting who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. "That's like saying that the public will have to pay to find out the names and phone numbers of its federal officials." Guttman points out that this 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. Rather, they report to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel, which have been awarded giant umbrella contracts, and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Without direct access to the raw data, groups like Investigative Reporters and Editors, a popular source of government databases for reporters, may no longer be able to offer the information to its members. "I'm a little bit concerned about the next go-round, and whether we are going to be gouged in terms of cost," says Jeff Porter, the database editor at IRE. Aron Pilhofer, who manages databases at the Center for Public Integrity, said he was withholding judgment on the new system until he found out the price for non-profits and journalists. "If they plan to charge $35,000 for what we used to pay $500 for, they are in for a lawsuit," he said."
(courtesy of d)