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White House Gets Green by Putting Federal Budget Online
coondoggie writes "Looking to save $1 million, 20 tons of paper, or close to 500 trees, the White House said today President Bush's 2009 Federal Budget will for the first time be posted online. The E-Budget will be available for downloading at the Office of Management and Budget Web site on Feb. 4. Typically the White House has paper-bombed congress and anyone else who wanted to read the budget with a tome which can reach 3,000 pages and weighed multiple pounds each."
To force anyone visiting it to print it out.
Now, all we need to figure out is how to let the constituency modify it.
This is an exercise that is left to the reader.
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White House Gets Green by Putting Federal Budget Online
Really? I thought they got green by taking it out of your paycheck?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Why? Because everyone's going to have their assistants print the budget off for them.
What about all of the hot air coming out of the Whitehouse that leads to global warming?
3000 pages???
Just printing the budget puts a nice dent in the budget, huh?
Glad they made this change. More accessible AND less expensive.
You mean it will actually be searchable in an efficient, reasonable manner? Or will it just be one giant black rectangle playing the part of a 3000-page redaction?
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
The bigger story here is that non-congress members will be able to read budget for free in the first place. There should be a distributed volunteer campaign for each user to read a page of the budget and look for outrageous tidbits.
A three THOUSAND page pdf?
that is 3,000.
THREE THOUSAND
Nobody is going to read it.
BitTorrent would work very well to distribute this information.
Admittedly, wiki'fying the federal budget would open up things like line items for lolcats and dead penis birds and all manner of other tomfoolery, but by giving us the chance to annotate/summarize/etc. the budget an unprecedented level of accessibility and transparency could be brought to the process. Imagine having headings for topics that not only discuss the broad outlines of a given spending area (say, science) but also wikilink down to the actual language in question and in turn for any given segment of language in the budget bill be able to see who authored what (Senator X likes bridges, Senator Y likes cancer research, the National Helium Fund is a big deal to this congresscritter, and so on). Rss feeds of changes. Version control meets legislation. Accountability, dialog with context and facts that doesn't require consuming a massively inconvenient format. The mind boggles.
Sure, this would require an army of OCD policy wonks and editors, but, well... it's worked once so far, more or less.
I downloaded the 2008 budget just yesterday from here, http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy08/browse.html Ooh, maybe they mean this is the first time the *2009* budget is available just like it is a first every year each time it's posted.
What is stopping them from downloading it, and printing it themselves? Or giving it to an intern who runs off ten copies instead of having to open up just one from the regular post mail?
Have we really solved anything? Now, if the budget was in a PDF that prevented printing, NOW we'd be somewhere...
(tongue planted in cheek)
Paper industry lobbyists reduced donations to Republicans.
"Would you as president maintain a blog?"
.. put it online in a single easily accessible place.. for people to comment on and stuff.
A: What is that?
Actually though all governments in the world should have their departments, when they do a report (at least annually I hope) on wtf. is happening within it - difficulties encountered etc.
Less delivery, perhaps, means less fuel usage though people will have to go to the store to buy an extra few k sheets of paper. Printing at a commercial printing outfit is probably more efficient than running thousands of in-office laser print runs, so that's another loss. Less delivery effort for postal workers too. All up, looks like potentially a loss.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
500 trees is a pittance compared to what could be saved.
As an unforeseen side effect of incentives for loggers put in place by the Bush administration, it turns out we didn't have enough trees left to print the report.
Paper is a renewable resource like rice or strawberries. It's grown on farms like any other crop. They aren't out there chopping down ancient redwoods for paper.
The issue of going paperless to save the planet was always bogus. Driving a mile in a car has a much larger impact on the planet than printing a page.
In the US at least, paper (and most lumber) is made from trees that are farmed. The more paper you use, the more trees are planted. Paperless distribution costs energy every second you spend reading the document.
Hamster
My personal budget fits on one page.
The specs for a 1 person software development project that would take about a month of work could spawn anywhere between 5 and 100 pages.
Specs for just about anything (software or otherwise) are always much bigger than an average budget of the same scale.
Also consider that electronic copies opens up the door to source control and therefore auditable revision history. Ever wonder who added that earmark in the dark of night, after committee, just hours before a floor vote so none of the voters could review it?
Serious. My team can't check in code without leaving a revision history, why should congressional staffers be able to modify legislation without leaving an auditable (revertable) trail? This would do wonders for our transparency and accountability problems in congress.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
The Bush administration's longstanding record of anti-environmentalism is suddenly wiped clean by a single, empty, token gesture.
Your hatred and mis-conceptions make you weak. Your Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) tells us your a fool.
The headline of the article implies that this is intended to be some kind of environmental decision, but nothing in the article appears to back it up. In fact, the guy quoted is primarily going on about the much-improved accessibility of the budget. It'll now actually be possible for people to get it (rather than forking out an impossible $200 just to read it), and being in an electronic form, it's much easier to search through and index, not to mention only reading or printing the bits you happen to be interested in.
At the moment I'm working at a government department (non-US) where we've been publishing information online for a while now,. People love it, both inside the organisation and those in the general public (journalists, opposition politicians, economists, and whoever else may have an interest). This is largely to do with the Official Information Act which, in New Zealand, basically states that government departments have to make available whatever information people ask for, unless there's a good reason not to. Over time it's resulted in most government entities publishing large amounts of information even when it's not requested, on the assumption that someone may ask for it sooner or later.
The annual budget is probably one of the most important blocks of information and it's also one of the hardest, because it tends to be full of massive amounts of tables and figures from all over the place and from all kinds of different sources and people who often like to do things in very different ways. Even in a small country it's a big logistical exercise. Recently redeveloping the website to make things more accessible was a 2 to 3 year job, simply because of the amount of historical data that had to be gone through and re-formatted with more accessible markup, with people either using scripts or just manually trawling through it. I guess the nice thing about it now, though, is that there are systems in place to make sure that new data gets marked up usefully in the first place.
Budgets are huge things to manage, as much because of the massive amounts of organisation that have to go into collecting the information and compiling it all together in a way that can be printed at all. Hopefully getting it out as a PDF would be the first step for the White House towards getting it more accessible.
I will be in the form of doxnloadable OOXML.
...which simply says "70% military, 25% domestic defense, 4.99% other domestic concerns, 0.01% schools and education."
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
What about energy used in the producing, distributing, printing, binding, distributing (and so forth) steps for a paper version?
Things aren't magically "green" just because they are farmed.
I'd be highly surprised if the energy used in viewing the pages you were interested in online (and probably selectively printing specific bits out) were to be more than the energy involved in getting 3000 pages of hardcopy from a seed to your desk.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
According to HP, the model 98 black ink cartridge has an approximate yield of 400 pages. Staples carries the 98 cartridge for $20, and cheap copy paper is $4.50 a ream.
.5)
3000 pages / 400 per cartridge = 7.5 cartridges (round up, to 8, since you can't buy a
8 cartridges * $20 = $160 in ink
3000 pages / 500 per ream = 6 reams
6 reams * 4.50 = $27 in paper
$187 in materials, and $? in time
Time to buy that laser printer...
Your strange, controverted reply tells us you're a fuckwit.
Back when the Republicans first got control of congress, and were still lead by more fiscal conservatives, John Kasich actually distributed copies of the House spending bills in Excel and 123 formats off of his web page. I remember downloading one of those monsters via dialup and going through it. Then, of course, Bush got elected, and overnight, the likes of Kasich and Army were forced out, and with them went any hope of fiscal responsibility.
This is my sig.
Should be the first line in the damn budget.
How many office printers are chugging away on this print job? (And probably not even printed in full duplex...)
Typically the White House has paper-bombed congress and anyone else who wanted to read the budget with a tome which can reach 3,000 pages and weighed multiple pounds each."
Googling from 1988 to the present the office of the President has never submitted a 3000 page budget request. coondoggie is pulling that number out of his/her butt (or I'm using the wrong search terms).
Congress re-submitted a 2000+ page document to GWB in 2007.
The budget is a request for funds, granted by the constitution to the President of the United States.
The Budget of the United States Government is a federal document that the President submits to the U.S. Congress. The President's budget submission outlines funding recommendations for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1st.
The funding Bill Congress returns to the President with riders and pork projects is a different matter.
The president can refuse to sign it (Both Reagan and Clinton) and shut down government services. Its then up to congress to revise and re-submit the bill to the President. The US constitution is a system of checks and balances. It doesn't stipulate how many pages of budgets or bills you can submit (sorta like slashdot).
Whats not discussed rationally between different parties (viewpoints) is whether or not the line item veto is constitutional (IANAL)? Can a president sign a budget bill and scratch off the bridge to no-where in Alaska? Can a President scratch out the museum of WoodStock off of a budget bill?
Food for thought for the USA slashdot posters.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
When the government wants to save money, they take the gigantic budget ... and put it online. Too funny.
They couldn't, you know, stop spending so much. That would cut down on paper, too. ("Don't buy things you cannot afford.")
Face it: if the budget was totally out of control because people couldn't read it, we'd be all set -- but it's not. So now it will be easy for people to search it, find out the government wants to spend $1T on a useless bridge in Alaska, and then what? Nobody's going to lose their office for it, just as they didn't when we did things with paper and people found out.
All this will do is mean that there's no practical limit on budget length. Paper never meant lack of accountability, and in fact, usually means the opposite.
that's a good start, however for some time now I've been thinking that the government should be publishing real time expenses online through an easy to use interface. I live in Toronto, Ontario and our city has been suffering on the verge of bankruptcy even though the budget from the taxes is over 7.5 billion CAD/year. About 60% of the money goes to the unionized city workers, which is a shame, there is no competition for the city contracts really, it's all government based mafia. This is not a surprise given that the city is governed by an NDP idiot-troll and the province is yet again in the hands of a liberal pathological lier.
I would like to see the government's bank statements on line. If the city gets the 7.5 billion CAD a year from the taxes, I would like to see the current balance, look at all expenses in detail. If a million is given away here, another million there, I would like to see the details of every transaction.
If the city mayor suffers a defeat on his crazy tax proposals (something he concocted instead of looking at balancing the budget the correct way, without immediately imposing new taxes the NDP way,) then the mayor wants to punish the city with meaningless reduction in working hours of community centers and libraries, I want to see the savings in the budget. Of-course the truth is that there was no savings, since the union city workers are still sitting in those centers and libraries because the union will not allow the city not to pay these people and the only sufferers are the citizens who cannot use these public resources.
The government does not want the citizens to be able to see detail of every dollar that is spent, because if we did see these details, we would revolt.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm always amazed when I hear something positive like this that it hits me, "Wait, you mean they've been printing out tons of paper for years when they could have been doing this?!" Now the scary part is that I've read that Bush isn't really computer savvy. I wonder if he'll work off of hard copy?
Some asshat in the whitehouse decided not to send congress any copies this year. now THAT would be hilarious...just order the GPO not to print it and thus force congress to pay for much more inefficient one-off copies while claiming a green-friendly whitehouse. I should note that I don't think the GPO would have done it as an administrative action--that would be blatantly smacking the reps/senators around...and why would you blatantly do that to the folks that approve your budget?
They should have just polled congress every year and cut their production accordingly once they went digital. Cause I know it's been digital for a while.
Seeing as the President doesn't make the official budget, I'm betting this is his proposed budget, not the end-all official 2009 All-Star World Series budget that is actually passed by Congress.
What? 2009? Bush is out of here in 2008, unless something dastardly is being planned.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Of course, we'll be able to grep through it, so it's cool.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
It'll go something like...
Page 1: Preamble
Page 2: Several billion to blow shit up in middle east
Page 3: Perks for politicians. Lots of air travel etc.
Oh yeah. I like a green budget. Just because you put it online and maybe avoid printing a few copies, doesn't make it a green budget. That's like saying loggers that use the right bin for their recycling are conservationalists. In a few generations these few generations will be known as the scum that caused half of the problems being faced while making ourselves feel good by using a different kind of light bulb and shopping bag and occassionally not bothering to print something.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Making the huge budget law searchable will revolutionize the budget process. It will no longer be advantageous to make it big just to hide screwings in a law that no one reads.
Instead, not a single person will ever read it, because Congress will develop billion-dollar software to automate the task. Eventually the budget will consist of the words "whatever, dude", though the inability of computers to analyze that will produce the same results as today: random money for arbitrary projects, as long as it's more than we've got to spend.
--
make install -not war
60% Old People, 20% Sick People, 15% Military (offense and defense), 4% other domestic concerns, 1% bridges in Alaska.
paintball
There was no declaration of war with Iraq.
white house gets ungreen by removing solar panels from roof...
Hmm... Just about the size of one of those iPhone bills from AT&T.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Actually, since the Federal budget is public domain, so something like this might fall within the purview of Wikisource, one of Wikipedia's sister projects...
I recently applied for a job at a government agency and at the end of the application process it gave several things that they'd like you to print out......3 days later I get the shit they wanted me to print out in the mail. I think I should know better than getting another government job.
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
As of 1997, then Texas Governor George W. Bush did not even have a public email address, even though Texas Lt. Governor Bob Bollock did (demonstrating that it wasn't a technical problem with the governor's office, it was an TCP problem in the firewall between the outside world and W's brain.)
And, yes, if the final budget is available the same way, with the revision history, you better believe I'm going to make sure that none of my congressmembers voted to cut funding on things I feel are worthwhile.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
The first idea that comes to mind is electricity. The library of fiction books I read every year took a few hundred pounds of paper to print. I spend a few weeks each summer re-reading them. If you're going to be reading the same thing over and over, at some point the amount of electricity wasted in leaving the computer running exceeds the amount used to manufacture the same book.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Both of your unwilligness to reveal your name tells us your commitment to troll-fu is weak.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
disclosure of all budget items.
I believe Texas is one of them. It apparently does cause legislators a lot of grief to the point many try to find ways to eliminate or bypass the requirement.
If only we could force the US government to be totally open people might get disgusted with the current crop of Democrats and Republicans to maybe do something
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There's still PHBs who are insisting their staff print all 3,000 pages, even though they won't read one of them.
They just like the look of it sitting on the corner of their desks.
What?
I don't know who came up with this, but it is good to see that Bush at least got one thing right before he left office. I wish other official departments/etc. would follow suit. I feel that the old argument that it's not easy to read text off a screen is non-valid beause today, we do read a lot of text on the screen as a fact, and getting there is just a matter of getting used to it.
Interested parties across the nation are thanking the White House for saving trees as they download and PRINT the budget.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
this must be their best shot to combat their enormous shredding budget.
Now all we have to do is get them to use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I applaud the Bush Administration for taking a large step towards addressing global warming and putting action to words of hypocrites like Al Gore who burn up the skies in their fancy jets. This also means we can afford more bullets to kill A-rabs cha cha cha.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
it'll be sure to clog the inter-tubes. it's not something you just dump something on, it's not a big truck.
"Looking to save $1 million, 20 tons of paper, or close to 500 trees...."
Trees are a renewable resource, ones used in publishing are mostly grown specifically for paper production in managed forests. Trees grown to make paper actually absorb lots of carbon. The whole business of "saving trees" is ridiculous.
...as in "red ink", since the country is technically bankrupt already.
No way to pay back the loans the gov't (actually, we through our representatives) have made.
Bush and his comrades are proven evil bastards. Just because his administration does something decent once in a while doesn't give them a free pass. Kudos to the saved trees, but Bush is still an ass.
Method of processing duck feet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
First, there's no hyphen in "nowhere".
Also, through RTFA, we see:
1) wasn't a bridge to nowhere, but from Ketchikan to Gravina Island.
2) funds already allocated to Alaska.
3) Governor Palin killed the project.
As for the Woodstock Museum, someone else can speak on that.
Jeez, I not only voted for Bush, but I gave the guy money, but the facts are on the table. All of the libertarian Republicans were forced out when Bush got elected or shortly therafter. Dick Army got the boot, Newt got the boot, Kasich got the boot, and so on.
The facts are facts though.
Before Bush was elected, Republicans in Congress were cheap bastards that brought the nation an unprecedented surplus. As soon as Bush got in, they became spending whores. It's just a simple fact, and you can't call that flamebait. If that offends you, then that's too bad, but those are the facts.
This is my sig.