5 ms·

I bet the US government has lots of useful websites that I've never even heard of. But every now and again I randomly stumble across one (like the one from your

I bet the US government has lots of useful websites that I've never even heard of. But every now and again I randomly stumble across one (like the one from your comment), and it makes me wonder if there is a "discovery problem" here. What other useful govt sites are out there, but are unknown to me.

kibwen 5y ago
Here's one I stumbled upon recently: the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has an interactive sea level rise map where you can see whether a given location in the US will suffer flooding/inundation from sea level rise based on the value the user selects: https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/# https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#
- jrwr 5y ago
  Interesting thing with that tool, it doesn't show any rise in the great lakes, I wonder if they would rise at all.
  - EricE 5y ago
    They are higher than the ocean (Niagara Falls!) so no - unless the paths between them and the path to the ocean gets blocked they won't rise.
  - deeg 5y ago
    All else being the same I would expect the great lakes to rise. My guess is that the lake levels are so strongly tied to rainfall patterns that it's pointless to predict their future levels right now.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The discovery problem is not only known, it's writ large. There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget. If you've ever seen the "question mark vest guy" (Matthew Lesko, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko), who offers book on federal programs available and how to take advantage of them... He's been criticized as a charlatan or misleading people, or encouraging people to "freeload," but here's the thing... He's really quite sincere. He believes the US government bureaucracy has failed in its duty of public information and education and is full of under-utilized programs that, as a result, become tools for the informed to siphon resources from those the programs were intended to help. He thinks that's unfair. The "Free Money Now" book covers and TV advertisements are employed because his target audience is assumed to not be savvy enough to do the research themselves, so he's trying to reach them with noise and spectacle where quiet black-and-white announcements buried in the back pages of local newspapers have already failed (and the fact that he started his work in the era where the easiest way to reach his target audience was still books because the sorts of people who didn't know about benefits programs they were eligible for were strongly correlated with lack of Internet access, not surprisingly).
- EricE 5y ago
  All the information in his book is freely available too: https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.php https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.php He makes it easier to find since he actively advertised on TV, but still probably isn't worth the fee for that convenience.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Probably not worth it to you and me. For the target audience, the fact that the linked site doesn't have "tangible dimensions" (i.e. I don't know where I am "in" the site) and can't just be read front to back is already daunting. I have relatives who have Lesko's book and just browse through it in the bathroom. It's comforting to them not only how comprehensive it is, but that in some sense it has a beginning and an end; when they finish the book, they have some kind of confidence that the percentage of programs they're aware of is now large. That might be a false confidence, but the sense it's possible keeps them reading. Hard to do that with a searchable index.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget. It's intentional. In addition to the lack of advertising, making people fill out needless/confusing forms, etc. also filters out people who are legitimately entitled to government benefits. It's a special type of cruelty to dangle a benefit behind so much red tape in front of people who don't have the time or know-how to deal with it! The US COVID test program, seems good at first blush. On the one hand, it was a breath of fresh air that all you have to do is go to one website and fill out one very short form. On the other, the parameters of the program were 4 tests per address. USPS already knows every address, so why did I even have to bother filling out the form? Why aren't they just sending out the tests?! There are going to be people who want/need the tests but won't get them because of the bureaucracy.
  - hooande 5y ago
    They aren't sending the tests out, in part, because 1/3 of Americans would performatively destroy them on social media. Not to mention that the tests cost money and sending them to people who didn't ask for them isn't good practice. The government generally has a responsibility to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. If they send something to everyone who qualifies then sooner or later it will be abused or inefficient, and those will be the stories that make the news.
EricE 5y ago
I was looking at all the domains in .gov for a project at work and there are indeed some fascinating ones out there. Lots of abandoned stuff too. If you want a fascinating rabbit hole: https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domains/ https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domain...

kibwen 5y ago

Here's one I stumbled upon recently: the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has an interactive sea level rise map where you can see whether a given location in the US will suffer flooding/inundation from sea level rise based on the value the user selects: https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/# https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#

jrwr 5y ago
Interesting thing with that tool, it doesn't show any rise in the great lakes, I wonder if they would rise at all.
- EricE 5y ago
  They are higher than the ocean (Niagara Falls!) so no - unless the paths between them and the path to the ocean gets blocked they won't rise.
- deeg 5y ago
  All else being the same I would expect the great lakes to rise. My guess is that the lake levels are so strongly tied to rainfall patterns that it's pointless to predict their future levels right now.

shadowgovt 5y ago

The discovery problem is not only known, it's writ large. There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget. If you've ever seen the "question mark vest guy" (Matthew Lesko, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko), who offers book on federal programs available and how to take advantage of them... He's been criticized as a charlatan or misleading people, or encouraging people to "freeload," but here's the thing... He's really quite sincere. He believes the US government bureaucracy has failed in its duty of public information and education and is full of under-utilized programs that, as a result, become tools for the informed to siphon resources from those the programs were intended to help. He thinks that's unfair. The "Free Money Now" book covers and TV advertisements are employed because his target audience is assumed to not be savvy enough to do the research themselves, so he's trying to reach them with noise and spectacle where quiet black-and-white announcements buried in the back pages of local newspapers have already failed (and the fact that he started his work in the era where the easiest way to reach his target audience was still books because the sorts of people who didn't know about benefits programs they were eligible for were strongly correlated with lack of Internet access, not surprisingly).

EricE 5y ago
All the information in his book is freely available too: https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.php https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.php He makes it easier to find since he actively advertised on TV, but still probably isn't worth the fee for that convenience.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Probably not worth it to you and me. For the target audience, the fact that the linked site doesn't have "tangible dimensions" (i.e. I don't know where I am "in" the site) and can't just be read front to back is already daunting. I have relatives who have Lesko's book and just browse through it in the bathroom. It's comforting to them not only how comprehensive it is, but that in some sense it has a beginning and an end; when they finish the book, they have some kind of confidence that the percentage of programs they're aware of is now large. That might be a false confidence, but the sense it's possible keeps them reading. Hard to do that with a searchable index.
dfxm12 5y ago
There is a vast bureaucracy of benefits available to Americans that most Americans don't know about because the creation of the programs rarely includes advertising in the budget. It's intentional. In addition to the lack of advertising, making people fill out needless/confusing forms, etc. also filters out people who are legitimately entitled to government benefits. It's a special type of cruelty to dangle a benefit behind so much red tape in front of people who don't have the time or know-how to deal with it! The US COVID test program, seems good at first blush. On the one hand, it was a breath of fresh air that all you have to do is go to one website and fill out one very short form. On the other, the parameters of the program were 4 tests per address. USPS already knows every address, so why did I even have to bother filling out the form? Why aren't they just sending out the tests?! There are going to be people who want/need the tests but won't get them because of the bureaucracy.
- hooande 5y ago
  They aren't sending the tests out, in part, because 1/3 of Americans would performatively destroy them on social media. Not to mention that the tests cost money and sending them to people who didn't ask for them isn't good practice. The government generally has a responsibility to avoid waste, fraud and abuse. If they send something to everyone who qualifies then sooner or later it will be abused or inefficient, and those will be the stories that make the news.

EricE 5y ago

I was looking at all the domains in .gov for a project at work and there are indeed some fascinating ones out there. Lots of abandoned stuff too. If you want a fascinating rabbit hole: https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domains/ https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/12/18/a-complete-list-of-gov-domain...