Obama Chooses Carter for ‘Transparency’ Board

WASHINGTON, July 29, 2011 — A senior Defense Depart­ment offi­cial who has a lead role in Pen­ta­gon cost-sav­ing and effi­cien­cy efforts has been named to a new White House board to cut waste in fed­er­al spend­ing.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma yes­ter­day appoint­ed Ash­ton B. Carter, under­sec­re­tary of defense for acqui­si­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and logis­tics, to the 11-mem­ber Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty and Trans­paren­cy Board, a body he cre­at­ed last month as part of the administration’s “Cam­paign to Cut Waste.” 

Oba­ma, in announc­ing the board’s cre­ation, said its mis­sion will be to “hunt down and elim­i­nate mis­spent tax dol­lars in every agency and depart­ment across the fed­er­al government.” 

In his June 13 exec­u­tive order to cre­ate the board, Oba­ma said it will build on two years of efforts by the Recov­ery, Account­abil­i­ty and Trans­paren­cy Board to save tax­pay­er dol­lars by cut­ting waste­ful spend­ing and increas­ing effi­cien­cy in gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions. That has been done, he said, “by curb­ing uncon­trolled growth in con­tract spend­ing, ter­mi­nat­ing poor­ly per­form­ing infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy projects, … and open­ing gov­ern­ment up to the pub­lic to increase account­abil­i­ty and accel­er­ate innovation.” 

Carter, since tak­ing the under­sec­re­tary posi­tion in April 2009, has cham­pi­oned efforts find cost effi­cien­cies in the Pen­ta­gon bud­get, par­tic­u­lar­ly in acqui­si­tions, and to redi­rect sav­ings to sup­port warfight­ers and speed up the field­ing of equip­ment and oth­er needs to deployed troops. 

Carter was named to the board, which held its first meet­ing yes­ter­day, along with 10 oth­er senior fed­er­al officials. 

“With our nation’s top watch­dogs at the helm, we will deliv­er the kind of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty for fed­er­al spend­ing that the pub­lic deserves and expects,” Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who will pre­side over the board, said in a state­ment released today. 

The board is to issue a report by the end of this year rec­om­mend­ing a broad range of strate­gies to make gov­ern­ment spend­ing more trans­par­ent, to improve the use of tech­nol­o­gy to pre­vent fraud, and “offer a com­pre­hen­sive vision for the man­age­ment of fed­er­al spend­ing that will fun­da­men­tal­ly change how gov­ern­ment works,” accord­ing to a White House news release. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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