WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) released the following statement today on the House passage of The DATA Act:

“Today, the House passed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act – an important piece of legislation that will establish a new era of transparency for the federal government. I want to thank Chairman Darrell Issa and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings for their bipartisan work on this legislation – particularly their efforts to reduce compliance costs for federal recipients while balancing the need for better transparency.

“Standardizing the way this information is reported, and then centralizing the way it’s publicly disclosed, will make it a lot easier to identify needless duplication and inefficiency and help us spot and prevent waste and fraud. It will help inform the work of Congress and allow taxpayers and policymakers to more accurately track federal spending.

“I will carefully review the House legislation to incorporate many of their improvements in the companion Senate bill, and I hope we can pass a bipartisan DATA Act in the near future.”

Senator Warner is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee's bipartisan Task Force on Government Performance and is the lead sponsor of Senate companion to the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which has been referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.