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Recovery.gov Not Very Transparent

Posted by timothy on from the why-do-you-despise-progress? dept.

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."

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. The Fleecing of America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. well at least... by mastergoon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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!

  3. The whole process is not transparent by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would rather see the law making process more transparent, just look at the stimulus bill:

    • Obama promised not to sign bills that hadn't been posted online for the public to read for at least five days BEFORE the final vote was cast.
    • Speaker Nancy Pelosi, promised that the final version of the scam stimulus bill would be posted online for at least 48 hours before the vote.
    • The 1,073 page scam bill, with an extra 421 page Explanatory Statement, was delivered, still unfinished, at midnight Thursday.
    • The House passed the bill 14 hours and 24 minutes later.
    • The Senate did likewise 3 hours and 5 minutes after the House.

    source: http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/hiding+the+sausage

    --
    Reviewing just the first hour of video games.