^®: CRE Regulatory Action of the Week

OMB's Supplementary Guidance on Data Quality: 1 Step Forward, 1 Leap Back
OMB recently issued supplementary guidance clarifying how federal agencies should interpret OMB's earlier government-wide guidelines implementing the Data Quality Act. OMB's latest guidance made several advances, in that it addresses a number of inconsistencies among agencies. For example, the new guidance eliminates agency attempts to apply the guidelines on a case-by-case basis. However, OMB stepped backward by not sufficiently clarifying that agencies cannot shield entire categories of information from coverage under the Data Quality Act guidelines. Consequently, CRE believes that when OMB reviews agencies' conforming Data Quality guidelines beginning on August 1st, OMB should again specifically curtail agencies' attempts, as they did in their originally proposed guidelines, to exempt information through their broad definition of "archival data"and through their use of loopholes to exempt a significant portion of the rulemaking process from the Data Quality Act.