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Recovery.gov Not Very Transparent
Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN is reporting that the page recovery.gov is
not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are:
1. The user is greeted by a large pie chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions.
2. Finding projects involves a complicated search, information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov
3. The format of the information available is of poor quality (the article specifically mentions a PDF document that was created from a scanned sideways copy of roadwork projects from New York state).
Given that this site was meant to make the spending of the new stimulus money more transparent to the citizens of the Unites States of America it seems oddly opaque. CNN does seem to praise the ability for government agencies to be able to exchange HTML based information between systems, which for government I would call a massive accomplishment.
I tried to find information for my state and searched for Minnesota. I got 4 matches, 2 of which were generic ones: one was the Minnesota state certification that is required for a state to receive funds and one that lays out public transportation spending for all states of which Minnesota gets $94,093,115."
US taxpayer money has *NEVER* really been tracked/reported fully and honestly. The public *NEEDS* to be aware of where their money goes. It is your money, your house, your car, your environment, YOUR GOVERNMENT and again, money.
Accounting/reporting where the money goes may be expensive - but can we afford not to?
Just please tell us where all this money is going. Be accountable for your actions. Be HONEST! The days of hiding shit are over.
Open Source Government.
...the source of the site is transparent:
http://www.recovery.gov/modules/system/system.module
Hmm they really might want to get that Drupal updated to 6.10!
Really it is just a start. Ideal would be to have a standard financial format for all government expenditures, that way we can create a website like google maps that charts everything that goes on.
If I were president, I would put transparency, corruption, and a balanced budget at the top of the list of priorities, because those are like tar that slows everything else down. Once you actually have a balanced budget you can see clearly how many resources you have available to put towards health care, what can be sacrificed, etc. The government would run so much more smoothly. Sigh.
Qxe4
The site sucks! Recovery.com is WAY better.</sarcasm>
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I would rather see the law making process more transparent, just look at the stimulus bill:
source: http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/hiding+the+sausage
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It's Obama's initative, so there is an alternative (logical one too): whitehouse.gov.
.
or even better: cbo.gov, irs.gov.
Like what's going to ahppen after the recovery? Will the website still be updated?
.
Recovery.gov is pure PR.
Anyway, all the information on the site is boilerplate stuff you see on your IRS tax directions booklet. Like the pie chart--it's in the back of the booklet every year. Of course if you pay taxes and got it in the trusty USPS mail (likely!) you would know...
I believe they're working on that - like a standardized format for all government documents using XML. I would have sworn there was something about that on /. a few months ago, though I could have had one too many hits from the snake.