Serious Design Failure At USAspending.gov?

theodp writes "Over at Intelligent Enterprise, Seth Grimes declares the Federal Government's USAspending.gov website a travesty, calling it 'almost a parody of a government-transparency site.' Among the faults cited by Grimes is a botched 'Federal Spending FY 2009 YTD' pie chart that graced USAspending.gov's home page. Not only were the sizes of pie segments not in proportion to the percentage labels (due to a Google Chart API error), the colors in the pie chart didn't even match the colors and values in the table immediately below the chart. Lucky for the Feds, Grimes didn't get a chance to look behind the curtain at the Federal IT Dashboard, where they forgot to remove a (commented) reference to a Google spreadsheet that states 'These totals are pretty poor numbers' (Google workbook). Oops!"

Comments

Re:A step in the right direction

[xs650]

The bat shit crazies will never be satisfied.

Re:Criticize the Numbers Not the Presentation

[tweek]

No. Private companies pay executives for the associated risks for being executives. If you think you're up to the job of managing a multinational corporation, then I implore you to give it a shot.

And as a side note, those jobs didn't belong to those tens of thousands of people. They belonged to the company.

Re:Criticize inexperience and naivette

[lgw]

Sorry for the off-topic thread, but Palin rocks! I've had little reason to care about her politics, but her "fuck you" attitude to the press makes her my hero.

Palin comes from a different cultural background than you. Does that make her incompetent in your eyes? It seems that a great many people who call themselves "liberal" dismiss Palin because of her rural background, assuming that a rural background makes one stupid. Becuase intolerantly dismissing people based on their cultural background is the heart of liberalism, right?