What Should $80 Billion Teach the Public about Hunger?
While federal transparency policies have given us sprawling new government “open data” sites, stark disagreements about what information should be “public” have revealed concerning trends in both private industry and government to be overly protective about “trade secrets” and other “proprietary” or “sensitive” data.
2014’s prominent examples include whether or not healthcare providers should be more transparent about their pricing, the legislative rush to limit access to Social Security’s “Death Master File,” the food and agriculture lobby’s successful $45 million effort to defeat GMO labeling in California, and advocacy groups’ vocal opposition to so-called “Ag Gag” laws across the U.S.
Within the healthcare industry, many companies have staunchly resisted releasing more information about their pricing to avoid competition. Worse, we have already seen convincing evidence that companies could do a better job keeping people healthy and save billions of dollars through inexpensive preventative health care but largely choose not to, and, moreover, have actively worked together to obscure these facts. Certainly, after much criticism, the industry is beginning to adapt slowly to this new reality, though it remains to be seen how much these changes will benefit consumers.
More recently, this tension between “public” and “private” information has re-surfaced around the pending USDA decision to release additional information about where and how $80 billion in Secure Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) funding is spent each year.
In response, some food retailers have expressed concern that greater SNAP transparency would give their competitors pricing information that would amount to a “trade secret.” However, it is difficult to balance that argument with the latent social value in more granular data about how SNAP benefits are used.
Above is a quick plot of the limited SNAP data I was able to access from the USDA. As we can see a disturbing increase in the number of individuals needing financial assistance to purchase food immediately following the 2008 recession, as well as the total cost of the program increasing dramatically, understanding its internal trends will be vital to regulating the program as efficiently as possible.
While the USDA is only considering releasing information about the individual retailers where SNAP benefits are spent, additional information about what SNAP users purchase and in what quantities would make studying food access and nutrition much easier. As well, aggregating and anonymizing the data so that it is only viewable down to the state, county, city and/or zipcode could easily address competitive concerns while preserving much of the data’s value.
Looming larger is the broader question about what information belongs in the public realm and what can be restricted for private proprietary use or for public security. In tech, the much lauded web and mobile “platforms” that have emerged in the last 10–15 years are premised on free (though not unlimited) data access through standardized exchanges, and if anything, this free exchange has been a boon to competition and to consumers. Hopefully, government agencies, regulators and industry leadership alike will recognize this trend and embrace the manifest benefits of open public information rather than struggle in vain to retain an illusion of informational control.
Originally published at impactprogramdesign.com on September 17, 2014.
