The Treasury Department defended changes to the transparency website USASpending.gov on Wednesday, saying that the redesign is in line with the Obama administration’s track record on transparency.
"Consistent with the Administration’s efforts to increase transparency, participation and collaboration with the public, this week Treasury made a number of improvements to the USASpending.gov website in order to make it easier to review existing federal spending data," wrote David A. Lebryk, the Fiscal Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Treasury Department, in a blog post.
The blog was entitled "Transparency Refresh: Improvements to the USASpending.gov Website."
"The USASpending.gov website provides the public with access to spending data for federal awards like contracts, grants and other financial assistance from across the federal government," he said.
However, the new site has dramatically limited the ability to easily access how taxpayer dollars are spent in real time and eliminated searching for keywords and sorting government grants and contracts by date. Detailed information is only available in bulk.
Lebryk said the changes were designed to make the website easier to use by getting rid of confusing government contract "jargon."
"Our refresh of the website this week responds to feedback from external stakeholders to improve the usability of the site and adopts an award winning platform from Recovery.gov," he said.
According to the Treasury Department, the new website "Uses plain language: The new site’s descriptions and content limit government terminology and jargon to make the content easier to understand."
He also argued that the redesigned USASpending.gov "expands search capabilities."
"The new site provides simple searches with user-friendly titles for data elements," Lebryk said.
The new site does not allow users to search multiple years simultaneously, by multiple agencies, or for keywords.
The Treasury Department also said that the new homepage has "improved navigation to allow users to more directly summarize spending data." The summarized data is just that, providing only totals of funding, sub-awards, and transactions, and not details of specific contracts.
Lebryk repeatedly said the new site allows users easier access to "summary information."