Public Policy 264S-14 Fall 2011 Accountability in federal programs 150 Sanford, 2:50-4:05 MW

Sarah Cohen, Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy sarah.cohen@duke.edu / 140 Sanford / Office: 613-7348 / Cell: 202-213-6980 Office hours: 10-12 Wednesday, by appointment, or whenever my office door is open

Course Description
When public policy meets governance, the results are often messy, confusing and inscrutable. This class will give you the tools to investigate the performance of a federal program by providing a roadmap to the public record and a strategy for using it. By focusing on accountability, it will help you put any spending or regulatory program under a microscope. There is no evaluation of the policy itself, just of its performance. This class will be taught as a seminar with some lab work. In the seminar, you will learn how to use standard and unusual documents and databases to evaluate how well the program is meeting its promise from inception to oversight. Records include authorization and appropriations legislation, implementation documents, spending, oversight in Congress and investigations. You will be encouraged to file at least one Freedom of Information Act Request and to conduct some interviews of people you identify on your own. The lab will let you practice acquiring and using public information, usually in the form of databases containing original administrative records. You will come out with concrete skills and knowledge that can be used whenever you want to study a government program. But the cost of getting there is uncertainty there is no failsafe route to take for your project, no guaranteed outcomes and no promise that every step can be pre-planned. Warning: I dont know the answers to a lot of your questions but I can direct your work and suggest paths.

Objectives
Find and use standard primary federal records Follow a strategy to hold any government activity accountable. At minimum, recognize which technical solutions might solve practical problems in records acquisition and analysis; at best, be self-sufficient in getting and using records. Experience working on team projects in which the precise steps and outcomes are unknown Produce a finished website of your findings and advice for further work.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Required materials
There are no required materials for this class youll be provided with handouts and guides as the course develops.

Suggested material
The Investigative Reporters Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases and Techniques, by Brant Houston, 5th Edition (2008), published by Investigative Reporters and Editors at www.ire.org. If you get a student membership for $25 youll get a discount on the book and will have access to tipsheets and other resources at IRE. Strongly recommended: Access to a reasonably up-to-date computer with permissions to install software. Please let me know if this is a problem, or if you dont have a computer you can bring to class every couple of weeks.

Structure and grading

Your final project will be a published website created by your team in Dukes WordPress environment. Everything in the course will be leading to that outcome. Depending on the size of the class and interests, there will be up to four programs examined in teams of up to four members. An effort will be made to let you choose your program, but its more important to engineer a good mix of skills and experience. This is a course about the process of holding government accountable, not the policy surrounding your program. You should be able to get just as much out of it even if the subject isnt your passion.

Routine memos 50%

Youll write up to 10 short memos on the progress and outcome of your recent work. This written work is at first an individual effort that should be posted for your teammates after the deadline. This allows for independent views of the same material and allows for individual assessments in a group setting. However, you are expected to split up the work in your team and post contributions to the groups resources as shown on the wiki site. Posting meaningful and complete material to your wiki by the Friday night deadline will be a significant component of this grade.

Class participation and presentations 20%

At minimum, class participation involves coming to class, answering direct questions and making at least one presentation on a topic from your routine memos. That level of participation would earn you a C. To improve on it,

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

you will routinely engage with your teammates; bring issues and problems to class that reflect the work assigned; follow up on questions that are asked during your presentations; and ask questions of or make suggestions to other teams during their presentations. Collaborating with your team members is a component of this grade.

Lab assignments and lab work 10%

Well have regular labs on data analysis and technical skills, often as a way to make sure that you can work with the data you obtain, or you can obtain the data you need for your project. Youll occasionally be required to do some assignments using the skills learned in the labs. You will also be required to attend a GIS workshop at the library over the semester.

Final website and presentation 20%

The final website and presentation will be done as a team. More information on this will be provided. Last semesters sites are linked off of the right rail here. At the end of the course, youll be asked to comment on the contributions of each member of your team and on your own contributions. These were used last semester to raise grades for students whose contributions were greater than they seemed from the outside. But the very best way to make sure that you are credited with your work is to share it publicly on the group wiki.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Weekly schedule
NOTE: This is the preliminary schedule. Updates will be made on the course WordPress site at http://sites.duke.edu/pubpol264s_14_s2011

Youll notice that the course gets less structured as we move past the basic records stage. Thats because we simply dont know what well find. Some programs will end up easier and others harder and we will accommodate both. While frustrating, its expected and natural. If you do your work, unexpected or insurmountable problems wont affect your grade. Each Friday night, you should have added any materials you are responsible for to your teams wiki. These should include links, actual documents, a brief summary of what they include, and efforts (including contact names and numbers where appropriate) that did not yield anything of use. Be sure to source everything you post if its not a direct link to a website. Anything posted after Friday night will be considered too late for your team to use and your grade for that subjects memo will reflect this. Labs will be held in Sanford 09 unless otherwise noted.

Section 1: Background
Week 1: Aug 29-31, Understanding accountability and introductions Week 2: Sep 5-7, Backgrounding from the outside in Week 3: Sep 12-14, Identifying stakeholders and their positions Week 4: Sep 19-21, Legislation and its artifacts Week 5: Sep 26-28, Promises, promises: finishing up on whats supposed to happen.

Section 2: Implementation and the paper trail

Week 6: Oct 3-5, How the program works Week 7: Oct 12, GIS Lab; your wiki documents due by Friday, Oct. 15 Week 8: Oct 17-19 Following the document trail from federal government to ultimate beneficiary

Section 3: Spending and regulating

Week 9: Oct. 24-26: Mashups, or compared to what? Week 10: Oct 31-Nov. 2: Government-wide spending, contracting, personnel and audit records Week 11: Nov 7-9, Specific records for your program, including state and local level

Section 4: Drilling down and out

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Week 12: Nov 14-16: Researching examples to test your premise Week 13: Nov 21: Program integrity and lawsuits

Putting it all together

Week 14: Nov 28-30: Workshops on finishing up, reactions to first drafts

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Details by week 1: Backgrounding your program

This section will help you identify two crucial questions. First, what is the program supposed to do, or can you recognize success when you see it? Second, what pieces of the program are ripe for further exploration?

Due dates
Friday, Sep 2: Take the skills and background survey Monday, Sep. 5: Two-page review of the July 2, 3 and 18, 2006 and April 6, 2007 contained in the Harvesting Cash pdf. See the assignment in Sakai for more details. Monday, Sep. 19: Memo on interest groups, lobbyists and other stakeholders; presentations Monday, Sep 26: Memo answering the key questions weve been asking: What should the program do? Who cares? How might you know?; presentations

Day by Day
Monday, Aug 29: Introductions and basic expectations and structure Some of the tools well be using : Sakai and Confluence wiki Overview of the programs

Wednesday, Aug 31: Recognizing sources and methods in investigative projects The life cycle of a government spending or regulatory program

Monday, Sep. 5: Team assignments and first team meeting in class, including setup of wiki. Discussion of the reading and your review Backgrounding from the outside in

Wednesday, Sep. 7: GAO, CRS and IG reports Budget justification / performance and accountability reports The quick view of the agency website (well come back for a deeper dive later.) You are responsible for posting your contributions to the team by midnight Friday. This is true almost every week from here on out.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Monday, Sep 12 What to look for on a programs website. Understanding lobbying and related records. Other ways to find stakeholders: congressional hearings, Your Seat at the Table documents, op-eds. Finding natural predators when they exist.

Wednesday, Sep. 14: LAB: Introduction to relational databases using lobbying records.

For this Fridays posts, each team member should, along with the materials found, post the names of at least two companies, organizations or people you might want to interview for background or more specific questions. Use North Carolina if you decide you want to talk with a state official, and one of our local counties if you want to talk with someone local. Monday, Sep. 19: Discussion of stakeholders Understanding congressional documents; House/Senate/Conference reports Congressional record, press releases, bragging to local news outlets Statements of purpose

Wednesday, Sep 21: LAB: More on databases and mixing and matching datasets. Source TBD.

Monday, Sep. 26: Discussion of promises, warnings and intent

Wednesday, Sep. 28 Earmarks and congressionally directed spending Program structure, intermediaries, formulas Reporting requirements to Congress

Note: You wont use this yet, but were looking at it while youre in the Congressional documents. You dont necessarily have to write about this section, but you are expected to know whats in it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Handouts / materials Slides on accountability stories An accountability source checklist Life cycle of a federal regulatory or spending program Better library research. (My apologies: A few of these links are broken, but the addresses are generally right. I cant seem to fix it in the pdf.) Congressional Research Service Oversight Manual. You dont have to read this, but you should skim through the table of contents to know whats in there and recognize when it might be useful. Examples of the documents and a roadmap to them in other projects. (to be distributed in class) Database basics: Lobbying records example. Finding the hidden directives from Congress in authorization and appropriations bills.

2: Implementing the program

This section will be a detailed review of the way that the federal government structured the program and how it gives out money, follows up with recipients, and regulates activities. By the time youre done, you should be able to construct a records trail starting from a federal agency and ending with an ultimate beneficiary or subject. You will likely have to research state records in North Carolina to get there.

Due dates
Monday, Oct 3: Read The Fine Print: A Word Accelerates Mountaintop Mining, Joby Warrick, The Washington Post, Aug. 17, 2004 and Fundraiser Denies Link between Money, Access, James Grimaldi and Tom Edsall, The Washington Post, May 17, 2004 Monday, Oct. 17: How the program works

Day by Day
Monday, Oct 3 The effect of implementation The Federal Register and its comment Program guidance, criteria Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Lettermarks How to follow a program through the system: important codes and markers youll need.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Wednesday, Oct 5 Finding the paper trail from the federal government to the ultimate recipient, often through the state Strategies for tracing the paper trail Federal Information Collections database Deep review of website; Where to look for forms and records Federal Freedom of Information Act and its state cousins

Wednesday, Oct. 12 You should report to Bostock 023 for a demonstration of GIS software.

Monday, Oct. 17 Wed. Oct. 19 (Theres a chance youll want to rewrite this memo after Mondays class. You can do so without penalty if you turn it in by Wednesdays class, but only if you turned in your original on time.) Discussion of your work on the paper trail Team meetings in class to settle on a strategy and method for narrowing your project geographically, by funding stream or some other way.

Materials
Sources for implementation records Examples of following the accountability trail

3: Spending and regulating

CHECKPOINT: By now, you should know what records are available from the agency, from a state or local government, and how hard they will be to get. You should have a sense of what they might tell you about the performance of the program and how hard they will be to work with. There is a good chance youll need help scraping them. That comes this week.

Due dates
Monday, Oct. 31: Memo on possible mashups Monday, Nov. 7: Spending and performace patterns in your program (probably as a group at this point)

Day by Day
Monday, Oct. 24 Beginning to think, Compared to what? Examples of comparisons in other projects

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Typical sources of comparison: Income, crime, geography, weather, internal inconsistencies Practices to make comparisons easier Mashups

Wednesday, Oct. 26 LAB: Web scraping and spidering tools; how to get a full set of records from a searchable database

Monday, Oct. 31-Wednesday, Nov. 2 Standard sources for federal government-wide databases Getting USASpending assistance data Consolidated Federal Funds Report Contracting records Understanding subawards Personnel and related information

Monday, Nov. 7 This is more of a workshop to talk through your final set of records, from state, local or federal sources. Overcoming weaknesses in your records

Wednesday, Nov 9 Cleanup tools: Google Refine and its cousins (not a lab requires installed software) Revisiting earlier records: Performance reports, appropriations hearings, budget documents, GAO, etc.

Materials
Looking for and thinking about mashups USASpending Understanding the budget process and documents Standard government-wide sources for spending and performance

4: Drilling down and out Due dates

NOTE: Finishing your examples will probably keep going until the end of the semester. This week well make sure youre pursuing them in the most efficient way.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Monday, Nov. 21: First look at your group website Monday, Nov. 21: Memo on your examples and how they fit into the overview

Day by Day
Monday, Nov. 11 Strategies for combining records to find the best examples

Wednesday, Nov. 13 To be determined. This is a catch-up day. I presume well need some slack in the schedule from the previous steps. Monday, Nov. 28-Wednesday, Nov.30 This entire week is devoted to team meetings and reviewing as a group where you are and where you can get in the last home stretch. It will help a lot if you already have the spine of your website created, but I understand that its the day after Thanksgiving weekend and that might be difficult. Think of it as an extra week of time before your final work is due for graduate students, it gives an extra week. Monday, Dec. 5-Wednesday, Dec. 7 Final presentations and websites. Depending on the number of groups in the end, we may only meet on Monday and have your final websites due on Wednesday.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.