Recovery.gov Not Very Transparent 222
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."
Uh... you know that.. (Score:3, Informative)
Check the timeline... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:well at least... (Score:3, Informative)
damn you slashcode!
http://paste.pierce.tv/?p=j3mzg68t0v&pasteid=1689 [pierce.tv]
Re:The whole process is not transparent (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry I left "scam" in there, didn't mean to present the site's bias in my post.
Re:Check the timeline... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a bit more of the timeline from the site... I seem to remember reading that there's no standard format defined for this data, so expect to see a bunch of garbage initially. If you want an easily manipulated database you might have to *shudder* get involved.
July 15, 2009
Recipients of Federal funding to begin reporting on their use of funds
May 20, 2009
Federal Agencies to begin reporting their competitive grants and contracts
May 15, 2009
Detailed agency financial reports to become available
May 03, 2009
Federal Agencies to make Performance Plans publicly available
Federal Agencies to begin reporting on their allocations for entitlement programs
March 03, 2009
Federal Agencies to begin reporting use of funds
February 19, 2009
Federal Agencies to begin reporting their formula block grant awards
Re:no kidding (Score:1, Informative)
as someone working in a university research administration office, i agree NSF hasn't been as forthcoming as NIH. All I've seen from NSF is funding for projects they had previously declined to fund, whereas NIH has created whole new programs (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-09-003.html).
If NSF does actually create new programs, I'm sure you'll hear something from them. For now though, I wouldn't hold my breath
Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
State's Haven't Allocated Yet! (Score:2, Informative)
I live in Minnesota. I also happen to have worked on transportation issues for many years. I know a bit about how this all works.
Most of the ARRA transportation money comes through the Surface Transportation Program, which is based on a formula for state and mode allocation. The $94,093,115 for public transportation in Minnesota comes from that formula. The money goes to the state's Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and DOTs. The MPO for the Twin Cities is a combination of the Metropolitan Council [metrocouncil.org] and the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) [metrocouncil.org]. The TAB is technically a governing body of the Met Council, due to the fact that the Met Council is not composed of elected officials.
The TAB is currently reviewing the list of projects to receive funding. They're quite limited on the transit side because few big transit projects are ever "shovel ready" the way roads are due to the federal planning process. I could write a book about the enormous advantage skew toward roads over transit in federal policy, but that's for another time. The fact that no transit projects are shovel-ready is a symptom of that.
So the TAB is spending quite a bit of time deciding where road money should go. MN-610 is definitely in. There's a debate over the I-494/US-169 interchange. That started just yesterday. There are many bridges in the Twin Cities metro area that need rehabilitation or replacement.
Greater Minnesota is the other big part of this. I'm less familiar with this side but my assumption is that Mn/DOT is making a determination of how to prioritize funds using its long-term transportation plan.
The point is that this all takes time. recovery.gov cannot show where the money goes until we actually decide where it's going to go.
There's no big conspiracy here. The fact that states have to explicitly report how the money gets used is a huge step forward over the way highway dollars usually get spent. Lots of people (including me) are working hard to ensure the new transportation authorization being written right now adds lots more language about transparency and accountability.
Re:Something the open source community should lead (Score:3, Informative)
Heck, I would love to see every Congressman's page on Wikipedia updated with all the earmarks for their districts and states and their vote on the bill which funded them.
You mean like this [house.gov]?
Congressional rules already require members to report their earmarks. More such rules are in the works.
And why such hating on earmarks? Earmarks in and of themselves are a good thing because they allow members to bring very local concerns and needs into the federal budgeting process. Sometimes the executive branch doesn't quite understand the local situations on the ground. That's why Congress controls the purse strings.
As long as earmarks are disclosed and go through some kind of vetting process (which they do now), I have no problem with them.
It's about web design (Score:4, Informative)
The information is there; you just have to spend several minutes to find it. Of course, it's a massive challenge to bring all this info together -- I'm sure that's why they have only general summaries on the main page and leave the details up to the state pages (since the states have the nitty-gritty details). That's the lazy route, but it requires more work on the part of your visitors. For example, here's my state's highway projects [iowadot.gov] and our local road projects [iowadot.gov]. Apparently they're going to be doing an overlay on 218, which I take whenever I drive to/from Cedar Rapids; fixing the pedestrian bridge on US 1 that was damaged by the flood that I sometimes walk on; doing some repairs at the Melrose and Sunset intersection on the UI campus, which I drive through perhaps once a month; replacing a bridge I drive over fairly regularly in Coralville; and doing some reconstruction up in Cedar Rapids on a road I drive on about once a month. But I had to follow the link to the Iowa site and navigate around in there to get those documents.
Tough challenge = slow implementation.
Re:Check the timeline... (Score:3, Informative)
I seem to remember reading that there's no standard format defined for this data, so expect to see a bunch of garbage initially. If you want an easily manipulated database you might have to *shudder* get involved.
They have defined the standard format for this data, as well as many of the procedures required, and then put the instructions to the agencies and departments up on the site. See the detailed guidance memorandum [recovery.gov].
If you ask me, that is very transparent.
Re:Yes they could make it much easier. (Score:5, Informative)
3D pie charts that show only 2 numbers are the devil's work.
What this tells me more than anything else is that although they want to be transparent, the people who put this together know almost nothing about presentation of data.
Please, everybody, read Tufte [edwardtufte.com]. Even if you don't agree with everything that he says, think about his points.
Then, for the love of God, never, ever, create a 3D pie chart again.
pork site:gov (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Fleecing of America (Score:3, Informative)
Open Source Government.
Kinda tough to have that when even copyright law proposals are being labeled as matters of national security [slashdot.org].
Re:Better than nothing (Score:5, Informative)
Obama's CIO didn't "step down because of corruption in his home team". He stepped aside for a few days after someone in his "home team" was suddenly and without warning arrested for charges that had nothing to do with the CIO. An arrest that was somehow timed to happen days after the CIO started, though the investigation was going on for months.
The CIO has no evidence against him, nothing indicating he ever did anything related to the arrest (which itself is not proof of that other guy's guilt). All he did was delay his start as CIO for a few days so that could all become clear. And now he's back, because it had nothing to do with him. Except perhaps he spent some time helping the investigation find its way around his old office, since he'd just been running it.
I understand you're not American. But if you're following the rest of our thrashing as closely as you evidently followed the "America's CIO's rocky start" story, you should look closer before you jump to conclusions. Because you were pretty wrong on that one, and the other one is much more important, and much more complex.
Re:pork site:gov (Score:2, Informative)
Well, it redirects to arkansas.gov, but we do have http://www.state.ar.us/ [state.ar.us] :]
Re:pork site:gov (Score:3, Informative)
If I'm not mistaken all US federal and state web sites are in the domain .gov
The Feds mainly use .gov, but the states often use .xx.us in which xx is the state abbreviation. (The states also use .gov sometimes, and even .xx.gov).
Districts and territories also often use xx.us subdomains, even those with top-level domains of their own. Sovereign Native American tribes use .nsn.us.
The federal government has a few second-level stuff.us domains, as well. This all makes global searching using Google's site modifier a pain in the tuckus.