Bankruptcy: Judiciary Should Take Further Steps to Make Bankruptcy Data More Accessible

摘要

There have been long-standing questions about a lack of comprehensive and reliable information on consumer bankruptcies. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (Bankruptcy Reform Act) required the federal judiciary's Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) to collect and report certain additional bankruptcy statistics and required the U.S. Trustee Program, which oversees bankruptcy case administration, to develop uniform final reports that provide certain specified data about each case. GAO was asked to examine the (1) availability and accessibility of data from the personal bankruptcy system and (2) potential benefits and limitations of the new data requirements of the Bankruptcy Reform Act in addressing these issues. GAO examined bankruptcy data systems and obtained documentation and interviewed staff from AOUSC, bankruptcy courts, and the Trustee Program; groups representing consumers and creditors; data providers; and academic researchers and other stakeholders. There are limitations to the availability, accuracy, and accessibility of data on consumer bankruptcies. AOUSC publishes certain aggregate statistics related to the numbers of filings, but few data are available on the causes of bankruptcy and the characteristics of bankruptcy filers. Several factors create challenges to expanding data on consumer bankruptcies--most notably, privacy and security concerns related to facilitating public access to the highly personal data contained in bankruptcy files. The AOUSC data are provided as aggregated statistics--rather than data on individual cases--which limits the extent to which they can be analyzed. GAO acknowledges the importance of these issues, but believes that better access to bankruptcy data already held in the judiciary's data systems--such as case-level data--would allow external parties to assess the data's reliability and limitations and could facilitate empirical research and the formulation of bankruptcy policy.