2.3: Programs
Other Information:
It is damning with faint praise to call "programs" the brightest light on the organizational- data Christmas tree. The work
of the government is parceled out for actual execution in programs. Like information about their parental units, the agencies
and bureaus, data that identifies and distinguishes programs is not comprehensively published. Some information about programs
is available in usable form. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance website (www.cfda.gov) has useful aggregation of some
information on programs, but the canonical guide to government programs, along with the bureaus and agencies that run them,
does not exist. Programs will be a little bit heavier a lift than agencies and bureaus -- the number of programs exceeds the
number of bureaus by something like an order of magnitude, much as the number of bureaus exceeds the number of agencies. And
it might be that some programs have more than one agency/ bureau parent. But today's powerful computers can keep track of
these things -- they can count pretty high. The government should figure out all the programs it has, keep that list up to
date, and publish it for public consumption. Thanks to the CFDA, data publication about the federal government's programs
gets a D.
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