Slashdot Mirror
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!"
Of course! This is true about Obama himself — the man has never had any executive experience, except for chairing a failed charity project (together with an ex-terrorist, khmm...).
But whenever this lack of experience was pointed out last year, the shrieks of the "we are the ones we've been waiting for" crowd drowned it out, who wanted their n00b elected without questioning, what the "Change" is going to mean...
Now, when the most technologically-advanced Presidency — remember all the endearing stories about his Blackberry, and the ridiculing of McCain's reluctance to use e-mail? — can't put a web-site together, "having never done this before" is an excuse...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Seriously?! You're going to give "the Government" a pass on this? Considering "the Government" spent several of the $15 million allocated to S. 2590 on this bloody web-site and gave this money to an outside consultant to build it, it ought to be damn perfect. It's not as though a bunch of noob's from the Obama administration sat down and hammered out this website out of the kindness of their hearts. This cost you and I a great deal of money. Something as out-front and key as this chart should have at least passed a sniff test before being published. Obviously no one gave this thing so much as a serious glance before publishing it to the site.
Yes. These problems are entirely caused by 8 years of failed policies. You can't really expect to see the positive changes from reversing those failed policies of the Bush administration until at least... January of 2012.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Having never done this before, the government is bound to have problems.
Exactly. We've had problems on commercial sites that came close to some of those, at least they're trying.
After 8 years of lies, no bid contracts to insiders and a near total lack of accountability, it's encouraging to see even tentative steps toward budget transparency.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's a big problem with government: they don't compensate high performers appropriately. Furthermore, they routinely compensate poor performers and promote them out of departments.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Pay attention -- these are the same people who want to run your health care.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Having never done this before, the government is bound to have problems. All of them do when they try new things.
Like a public health care option?