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Keeping track: This month the White House launched its new IT Dashboard, which provides information about the status of IT-related contracts in federal agencies. The tool includes analysis of whether contracts are on schedule or incurring cost overruns.
it.usaspending.gov
"The dashboard may be just the tip of an iceberg that will herald a new-age transparency regarding federal spending," says Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, a website that covers politics and technology. "Once people get used to this type of information being so readily accessible, they will demand to see [it] for all other federal spending too, and then the genie will be completely out of the bottle."
But the IT Dashboard also shows the limitations of the government's own open-government efforts, says Johnson. It helps users find the primary recipients of funding, but not subcontractors. Furthermore, it's not easy to discern the origins of contracts or their geographic distribution, and it's almost impossible to see how they are connected to elected officials. "The IT Dashboard is a tool for government to audit itself, but it isn't a particularly good tool for citizens to look at," Johnson says.
Johnson says the transparency corps could be mobilized to fill that gap. He notes that the dashboard is based on government forms that track the progress of government contracts and the milestones reached. These raw forms, which are available through the site, could be a gold mine for further work, he says.
For example, it's possible to extract the names of all contractors and subcontractors from these forms and plot their locations geographically, to see if they happen to reside in a particular congressional district. It's also possible to trace contractors' contributions to lawmakers, by identifying the company board members from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and then cross-referencing their names to Federal Elections Commission records of campaign donors. Thanks to the dashboard's own analyses, it may also be possible to highlight which low-performing companies are most closely tied to which politicians.
"The IT Dashboard is just one way of looking at the data," says Raseij, "and shows the government is trying to partner with the public in a transparent way. It's up to groups like the Sunlight Foundation and others to take the government's lead and make even more sense out of the available information and data for the public good."
Meanwhile, if you happen to hold public office, be careful what you ask for, and watch what you tweet.
Paying people to influence discussions in social media is big business in China and the U.S.
The battle over budget cuts may gut the U.S. government's effort to make information more widely available.
Software lets citizens snap and geographically tag urban blight.
Government Transparency at all levels
Once the minions rip apart the way the Federal Government spends our tax dollars, they can apply the techniques to the State levels too, and perhaps County Levels. As "servants" to the populace, these Elected Officials sure act like they walk on water and placing their spending habits under the open microscope make me feel a bit better. Once these spending patterns are determined, make 100% of all Congressional and Senate members apply Project Management Techniques like Earned Value management to track their performance - THEN make these project plans visible to the public as well, so you can ferret out the way the Suppliers spend our cash.
Secondary Suggestion:
How about a Web App like the one that tracks Sexual Predators that marks a map or street address where anyone recieving federal and state handouts (like prolonged welfare recipient or undocumented aliens)so the citizens can keep tabs on their local deadbeats and turn them into Fraud Investigators. As a tax payer, I feel we need to be able to validate the persons living on our hard earner dime. There's nothing wrong with needing help from time to time, but Welfare is not intended to be a cradle to grave endeavor.
Case in point - Robert Bobb in Detroit was able to sniff out over 200 fanthom employees on County payroll simply by making the workers pick up their paycheck, thus providing some validation. A web tool mapping the street addresses of recipients would go a long way towards transparancy. If you use data mining techniques to cross check car registration and dependents at our public schools or colleges you'll find even more abuse I am sure.
Looking forward to this exceeding funding issues
I hope we'll see these same techniques applied to regulations and executive orders, so we can start to close down the restrictions on our rights that started as a trickle under Mr. Bush, and has experienced a truly massive upswing since Mr. Obama took office. They are your rights people - it is time to start taking note when the Federal govt oversteps its Constitutionally limited bounds!! Remember - all humans are endowed with inalienable rights - the Constitution does not grant them - it establishes limits on our beloved guv'mint to keep it from curtailing them.
WashingtonWatch.com has got earmarks taken care of - collected 10,000 earmarks in two weeks already.
http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/earmarks/
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Phineas
127 Comments
Sounds Cool
Let me see if I got the gist... You want geeky minions to find Tweets and PDFs that spill the beans on government spending? An army of asperger-doofi that will provide transparency by rumaging through the intarwebz. You may djangle one-too-many nerves.
If you are captured and waterboarded, Sunlight will deny any knowledge.
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