This diary is a followup to Kos's post on the front page earlier today about Armstrong Williams being paid by the Department of Education (via a contract with Ketchum Public Relations and a subcontract with Armstrong's own firm) to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. The White House is already saying this was a mistake -- distancing itself -- but Williams hinted to David Corn that he wasn't the only one with this sort of government payout.
When I saw this item, it immediately jumped out at me, since, having worked in a government procurement office, and now for a smallish company with government business, I am deeply familiar with the nuts and bolts of the system -- how all this is done and what documents might be available through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
It struck me that this would be a good subject for a "distributed research" project -- where a number of people collaborate to try to find other similar arrangements by getting the documents and analyzing them.
[more below the fold]
A Few Initial Points
For starters, almost every government payment to a private entity is backed up by a contract or grant instrument. Even if it's a very high level official who requests the work, they don't simply cut a check -- some GS-12 deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy is going to have to put together a contract. It's true that many Statements of Work (SOWs) are vague, and that some politically sensitive things tend to be poorly documented, but I guarantee you, when the Department of Education file on Ketchum comes out, there will be useful information in it.
Most dKos readers are at least somewhat familiar with the Freedom of Infomation Act (FOIA). It was enacted in the mid-1970s after Watergate, to guarantee public access to most government information. Sure, there are exceptions (classified "national security" stuff being the main one), but none of them would apply to Ketchum, or the HHS contract for their "Karen Ryan" videos, etc. In fact, the main way government agencies get out of complying with FOIA requests is arguing that they are too vague to fulfill -- i.e. if you sent a FOIA letter asking for "any contract with a PR firm which might have subcontracted with a known media figure." They'd get out of that one easily -- by telling you that you need to request a specific document -- only you don't know what documents exist.
Cracking the Code
That's where some knowledge of the system comes in handy. Procurement actions of significant dollar value have to be reported for data collection purposes to the General Services Administration's Federal Procurement Data Center (FPDC). It used to be relatively difficult to access their information -- you had to buy an expensive CD-ROM -- so most of the people with access to it were beltway bandits looking for info on other beltway bandits awards. Now, however, just in the last couple of weeks, they've put the data up in the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG) (note that it's https:, not http:), which is available to the public for free.
Now, for those of you not familiar with the system, that's a lot of data. How do you winnow it down? Simple -- the North American Industry Classification (NAICS) code (formerly SIC code). Every procurement action is coded this way in the data. For "Public Relations Agencies," it's 54182. Now, that's still a lot of data, but the government buys a lot more "IT Support Services" that it does "Public Relations Services." When you find the contract numbers for Ketchum, or other firms involved in PR, advertising, political consulting, etc, you now have specific documents to request. They can't tell you they don't know what to look for.
With Armstrong Williams, there was no direct contract between him and the government. This is likely the case with the other people he alludes to. Think of it like this -- you hire someone to build a house for you, and they hire someone else to install the plumbing -- your "prime contract" and "privity of contract" is still with the builder, and they're the ones you pay, and they're ultimately responsible for doing the job. The fact that the pundits aren't likely to have their names on the prime contracts, however, doesn't mean there are no documents available. In most cases, government agencies have the right to review and approve requests to subcontract parts of the job, and in almost all cases there would be correspondence between the government and the prime contractor mentioning the subcontractor.
The FOIA requests need to cover 1) the entire contract administration file which would reside in the procurement office, and 2) any correspondence between the "program office" (here, likely the agency's public affairs shop) and that specific contractor, or any subcontractors under them. This is a sufficiently narrow request that an agency can't claim it's too broad to respond to.
Adopt an Agency
This is where the concept of distributed research comes in. I don't have time to track down all the interesting leads from the database myself, and since I work for a company which does business with the government, I'd prefer to keep my name out of the press... but I can coordinate the effort via the Internet, and provide much advice based on my experience with the system. What I'd like to do is get people to volunteer to "Adopt an Agency" as a dKos community project. No rules, no leaders -- just private citizens excercizing their right to know under federal law. The project should start with departments we know to have such contracts, HHS and Education, and move out from there to other departments and agencies which have data in the FPDS database which looks promising.
I've set up a Yahoo Group, "No Pundit Left Behind" to serve as a forum for coordinating this effort. If you're interested, please join the group.
Some good info on FOIA in general is available at:
Society of Professional Journalists
Since this story hits a raw nerve in the punditocracy, though, I think the blogosphere is really the right forum for breaking this story... It's going to take some time and effort -- a few months probably -- but if we can "out" a few more Armstrong Williams' it's well worth it! From what Williams let slip today, it sounds like he may be just the tip of the iceberg, and misuse of federal funds for political purposes may be much more widespread in the Bush Administration.
The initial work will mainly be trolling through the FPDS data to see who is contracting for PR flacks... then comes the actual FOIA requests.
If you think this is a worthwhile community project, please recommend this diary so people will get a chance to see it.