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Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 16y agoMore detail here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-technopocalypse-proposed-congressional-budgets-slash-funding-for-data-transparency/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-t... I haven't made any apps with data.gov, but I refer to it regularly for research material and statistical data and have found many useful resources that I would not have thought to look for otherwise. It's far from perfect, but seeing small improvements all the time and it's certainly easier to have a single resource for feed discovery. Cutting the budget for this seems perverse, at best.
- knowtheory 16y agoIt is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to. This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't provide it in this manner, the only way we're going to get access to it is via laborious and time consuming FOIA requests. And then, only if you know the data exists. This really is fucked.
- mberning 16y agoI know what you mean. I find it incredibly frustrating that we HAPPILY go after minuscule savings on things like data.gov and NPR, meanwhile it is 100% taboo to talk about cutting big budget areas like the military. In my opinion we need to be looking at the big 3 because that is where we have the best opportunity to make significant improvements. Defense Social Security Medicare/Medicaid
- j_baker 16y agoIt sucks, but the truth of the matter is that cutting back Defense, Social Security, and Medicare are touchy issues that can't be done easily. Far easier to cut back things like data.gov, which will only upset a few Silicon Valley techies. It seems to me that at this point, they're looking for politically low-hanging fruit rather than fiscally low-hanging fruit.
- jdp23 16y agoExactly. Many techies avoid politics and activism or fail to learn the skills to do it well. The learned helplessness leads to becoming the low-hanging fruit.
- tomjen3 16y agoThe solution isn't to get involved in politics, it's to put an end to this "if you haven't died by the age of 18, you get to cast a vote". At least a four year requirement of a four year STEM degree at an accredited university should prevent people who aren't used to dealing with facts from getting us all killed. Democracy is a great idea so long as you limit whom you consider "the people".
- te_chris 16y agoJust throwing this out there but..... you. Clearly your elitism knows no bounds.
- knowtheory 16y agoYou are clearly on the wrong website. Given the number of people employed in our industry without a university degree — many of whom are leaders in their subject matter area — i think your proposal is not just obviously discriminatory, but spitting into the wind of a gale of contrary evidence. Get out, see the world, go talk to people in places and industries where a university education isn't paramount, and then tell me again that they should be denied a right to vote.
- 16y ago
- jdp23 16y agoYeah really. It's almost like politicians in DC don't really want the information to be available ... That said, the HN community makes a real point of how apolitical it is. Rather than organize and work with government transparency advocates to try to influence the system, the norms here discourage people from discussing politics. So it's pretty ironic to me to see all the disappointment about this here.
- knowtheory 16y agoI really don't view this as a partisan issue, although in some senses it is political. The problem is that both political parties pay lip service to openness and transparency (although my partisan biases would claim one party favors this more than the other), the real difficulty is hold politicians to their promises in the face of the sausage-making of daily federal politics. But, to quote Napoleon, never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. I'm more than willing to believe that this is being left out of a sense of benign neglect. That this is being neglected is much more indicative of what Congress's actual priorities are. :(
- jdp23 16y agoI agree, I also don't see it as a partisan issue. Both parties have forward-looking people who understand the importance of transparency and the value it can bring to society -- and both parties have insiders who jealously guard information, pork experts whose main goal is to reward their campaign contributors, and some outright corrupt pols.
- thwarted 16y agoWhen it comes to website/software features or technology choices, we tell ourselves things like "there are many more grandmothers in the world than nerds" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389903 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389903) or "you're not the target demographic" or "you just don't understand what everyone else wants because you've got a technical bent" and "people don't want to use computers, they just want to get things done." But we still feel like we have a voice because we can speak with our capabilities and actually execute. But when it comes to politics, where we recognize that our voices are small and we aren't empowered to do directly do anything and that what all the grandmothers want is going to overshadow what we want, we tell ourselves that we'd be able to affect change if only we got involved and became more political. Small voices have an uphill battle on trying to execute on political stuff. If we have trouble communicating to people about what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to technology choices, we're going to have trouble communicating what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to things like government budgets or political positions. And I think we all recognize this. And that's why we're not politically involved and avoid discussing politics. It's a waste of my time to have political discussions with almost everyone, it makes me feel bad about being a nerd and valuing things like rational discourse, the scientific method, and trying to being informed. I'd rather spend my time doing things that make feel good about being a nerd, and that's having discussions about technology things and not political things. Stereotypical technology discussions have the capability to advance the state of the art; stereotypical political discussions rarely advanced anything. I think we also recognize that if you can't get people to take action on something obvious, such as that financing an expensive war machine is a massive waste and that we should spend more money on education, you're not going to have an easy time getting them to take action on something that's non-obvious. That being said, I think the value of transparency of government is obvious, but it's also hard to explain something that you find obvious to someone who doesn't also see that it's obvious.
- DrHankPym 16y agoWas Data.gov really that expensive to maintain? What is this cut really saving? $20 / month?
- Ainab 16y agoIf you only consider hosting, but gathering data and formating takes more than $20.
- ilikepi 16y ago"over the last few years data.gov has cost $8.3 million; the cloud computing initiative has cost $1.4 million; and USASpending.gov has cost $13.3 million" http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-technopocalypse-proposed-congressional-budgets-slash-funding-for-data-transparency/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-t... So yeah, a bit more than $20/mo, but relative to the budget as a whole....
- Estragon 16y agoSo, a few hours in Iraq/Afghanistan, then...
- maxogden 16y agowhen released, data.gov was the largest RDF triple store in the world #funfact
- baconner 16y agoI don't think that's true.. when released I don't recall any rdf data being available on data.gov. the rdf initiative came way later, no? On release it was just a list of external data sources with links and metadata.
- VladRussian 16y agofrom the sources it seems to be a doing of the House. Do we have any Republican here? Can such a person elaborate on the merits of this decision, please.
- shawnee_ 16y agoNot a Republican, but I think what they are failing to recognize is that these websites are infrastructure in the same ways that highways are infrastructure. Would we bulldoze the Interstate Highway system if we couldn't afford to maintain it? In the long term there are a lot of potential businesses to be built off the info these sites hold. For example: 379,939 raw and geospatial datasets on data.gov -- that's like 379,939 raw ingredients begging for a recipe to be made. One recipe = one business. Republicans love business, business, business. So somebody with some brains needs to explain to them how these sites with raw data are good for businesses and potential businesses that can create jobs and grow the economy that they love to talk about. Unless. . . the actual reason they are getting shut down is because the 'publicans have something to hide and they're worried what that transparency can reveal.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kmfrk 16y agoThe House basically controls funding, but I'd be interested to see who specifically voted in favour of cutting the programmes.
- protomyth 16y agoto back kmfrk the US Constitution says in Article 1 Section 7 that "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives". This has grown a little in meaning: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_q125.html http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_q125.html
- jacoblyles 16y agoI find myself voting for the GOP more and more as the US budget deficit yawns ever larger (please don't hate me for it), so perhaps I can shed some light on the issue. Most likely cuts to these programs were included in a multi-thousand page budget bill. The Republicans elected to Congress had a choice between two budget bills, one of which spent $30 billion less. Following the will of the voters who granted them a historic electoral sweep in November, they chose to pass the smaller one. The decision to cut these particular programs was made by one of the hundreds of lobbyists, aides, and government agency employees that had a hand in writing the bill. The congress people who voted for the cuts did not go down the list of federal programs making cost/benefit analyses to decide which programs to cut. Rather, they were presented a large package and asked to make a yes or no decision. Politics is not as rational as the rest of the entries in this discussion imply. These information programs are tiny for now (though federal programs have a way of metastasizing) and they probably provide more benefit than cost. It is a bad policy decision to cut them, but if the alternative is making no cuts to the budget then the whole package may be worth it. I agree that $30 billion of cuts does next to nothing to shrink the deficit. Sadly, there is little momentum behind my man Rand Paul’s proposal to cut $500 billion, or Paul Ryan’s roadmap to reduce future Social Security and Medicare deficits. The Republican leadership is playing budget theatre, passing tiny cuts that make them look good without touching the politically sensitive programs that really need shrinking. On the other hand the Democrats are playing budget denial, fighting to keep and expand every line item on the budget. Neither approach is very appealing to me. We need a plausible path to avoid national bankruptcy without raising taxes to uncompetitive levels.
- hendler 16y agoI don't claim to understand. Maybe there are problems with the ambition of the project, not the cost. Or maybe not enough people actually use it. But, shutting down a visionary (and probably inevitable) effort to open and modernize government feels like a backlash.
- protomyth 16y agoI think a lot of the ire is more directed at recovery.gov and data.gov is caught in the crossfire.
- jamesbkel 16y agoWhat a shame. I can't imagine there's a significant financial burden imposed by Data.gov (can't speak to the other services). I mean, the data collection certainly is the most expensive component... and from what I understand that keeps going independent of Data.gov. Presumably, the data is collected for programs beyond Data.gov - only more reason to keep maintaining the site since the marginal cost is minimal. Data.gov has been a useful resource for both my own work (marketing & sociological research), but more importantly is a great way to find free, relevant data for cutting one's data analysis chops - either as student or professional. As a stats nerd, I find this very depressing. [edit: As an amusing aside regarding my "relevant" data comment. A few years ago I was trying to develop a viz technique that I knew some potential clients would like, but I lacked a good data set that fit the requirements. I eventually ended up using R and other various free tools to create visualizations of fish weight and length depending on various conditions such as geography, water temp and a few others I forget. I certainly learned a lot, but I certainly would have benefited by having a data set that was both relevant in the real world and met the contraints of my problem.]
- pgdn 16y ago"I can't imagine there's a significant financial burden imposed by Data.gov" You allude to what I think is the main question ... what are the actual costs of running this site? In an era of misinformation and judgment calls I think this knowledge is absolutely crucial. Anyone know where to look? I assume Data.gov itself wouldn't contain such valuable and transparent information :>
- smogzer 16y agoWell maybe they are putting together a better site that makes up for all of those and also enable the citizens to vote and/or give ideas where they want their money spent, or just enable the voters to keep the money if they do not have representation.
- bmelton 16y agoThat is, I believe, the worst possible idea. "[A democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury."
- eli 16y agoThis is a misleading headline. Nothing has happened yet. From the source article: The White House requested $35 million for the e-government fund in 2011. The House allocated only $2 million in its bill, H.R. 1. The Senate, meanwhile, would provide $20 million for the e-government fund. http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2327798 http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2327798 It's a budget fight, similar to the ones going on at hundreds of agencies right now. There's a lot of posturing going on around the budget, but considering the project results in a net savings for the government, I hope that common sense will prevail.
- anigbrowl 16y agoAgreed, but some of the sites are set to lose funding in a few weeks amid a febrile political atmosphere. My understanding is that the main expense areas are hosting/infrastructural overhead, developer salaries, and normal office/administrative overhead which is a fact of life in DC. The pessimist in me thinks that keeping the inner workings of government in a state of murky obscurity furthers the interests of some more cynical politicians.
- eli 16y agoThis is a good point, but actually most of the federal government is set to lose funding and shut down next week unless something happens in Congress.
- robryan 16y agoFor some programs, you would have to think the cost of governments time debating it is greater than the total amount they are debating? It probably has a decent sunk startup cost to I assume?
- andrewgleave 16y agoThis is very disappointing. Later this month I'll be releasing the first open data project for the country where I currently live – the Isle of Man. I used data.gov as an example of what can be done, why it's important, and also to get initial funding for the project.
- motters 16y agoWithout transparency cronyism and bad governance can flourish.
- neovive 16y agoIt wouldn't be surprising to see private tech companies sponsor or subsidize these programs going forward.
- p09p09p09 16y agoNo problem, Wikileaks and Anonymous will pick up the slack.