Transparency at CBO: Future Plans and a Review of 2021
Report
CBO's transparency efforts are intended to promote a thorough understanding of its work, help people gauge how estimates might change if policies or circumstances differed, and enhance the credibility of its analyses and processes.
The Congressional Budget Office’s transparency efforts are intended to promote a thorough understanding of its work, help people gauge how estimates might change if policies or circumstances differed, and enhance the credibility of its analyses and processes. This report fulfills CBO’s requirement to report on its plans for such efforts.
In 2022, the agency will undertake many activities, with a major focus on three:
Explaining the methods it uses for its analyses in several topic areas, including health care, economic forecasting, climate change, and credit programs;
Providing additional information to help people understand CBO’s cost estimates; and
Publishing its periodic compendium of options to reduce the federal budget deficit, with a focus on options that would offer large reductions.
Those efforts will build on progress that CBO made last year, which included testifying before Congressional committees and answering Members’ questions, releasing data, evaluating the accuracy of the agency’s estimates, comparing current estimates with previous ones, estimating the effects of policy alternatives, characterizing the uncertainty surrounding estimates, creating data visualizations, and conducting outreach.
