An OMB report to Congress on the first year of implementing the Information Quality Act aimed to assuage concern about the law in three areas: the use of the IQA correction process, the pace of regulatory processes, and the effect on agency disseminations.

OMB stated that during the first year of the IQA, agencies received approximately 35 substantive requests for correction and that requests came from diverse sources (e.g., private citizens, corporations, farm groups and liberal and conservative nongovernmental organizations). Subsequently, an OMB Watch report concluded that OMB had under-counted the number of requests for correction by nearly a factor of three, and had failed to point out that although IQA challenges were indeed filed by a wide range of stakeholders, over 72% of the challenges were from industry. OMB claimed that the IQA had not slowed down agency rulemaking or dissemination activities. However, OMB Watch argued that OMB has no data on which to base such conclusions, since agencies did not submit any assessment of the IQA’s impact on future rulemaking, nor on how the guidelines have affected their dissemination of new information.

The Congressional Research Service's September 2004 report reviewing the OMB’s guidance and initial implementation on the IQA and recommended that OMB better clarify the scope of the law (e.g., whether a challenge to the minutes of a federal advisory committee meeting should be considered in an IQA correction request). It suggested that either Congress or OMB initiate the collection of more systematic and reliable data regarding the IQA’s effects.

Read more:

Information Quality Act history and guidelines.

Examples of challenges under the Information Quality Act.

Additional Resources