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Recovery.gov has gone live
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoI don't have much to say about the actual plan, but it's just so nice to see this stuff online.
- rrhyne 18y agoAgreed. If the transparency Obama claims materializes, it could end the grafting and pork. Also, this website could keep a handful of people employed! Yay!
- anthonyrubin 18y ago"If the transparency Obama claims materializes, it could end the grafting and pork." Have you read much about this bill?
- Radix 18y agoHmm, maybe his goal with this bill is to have something to show the public the extent of the grafting and pork. Then make everything transparent, push them all out of office. I'm starting to like my imagined version of Obama.
- ryanmnly 18y agoEven published on the recovery.gov site, it is still difficult to hone in on specific information. The bill is just entirely to big to be easily "accessible." Some type of smart search engine for it would be handy.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoHow confident does this make you that anyone read and understood this bill before voting for it?
- niels_olson 18y agoYou guys understand that acts are essentially patches to apply to the US Code, right? Literally, they read "insert, in paragraph 5a, after 'is the domain of', 'Hacker News and' The GPO, however, only prints the full code once every six (six!) years. They've got a room full of people reading and double-checking that they're writing exactly what's in the bills. Very archaic. Someone should apply a modern versioning system so the code is in black and the effects of bills are in red (and blue and green, like alexa or Google Trends does graphs, but with text), so the public can see not just the bill, but what the changes look like in real time. It's shouldn't be hard at all. I'll bet someone could do this with GitHub by this weekend and have a site up by the end of the month.
- jedc 18y agoVery interesting... I wonder if there's a business here? Free access to the text for the public, with premium features for people/orgs willing to pay?
- krisneuharth 18y agoFunny you should mention that. I've been working with a friend on something along this line for the last two weeks. We are looking to announce a beta launch here sometime next week. The site is going to be called Democritique. Stay tuned.
- jedc 18y agoSounds interesting; certainly look forward to hearing more.
- ryanmnly 18y agoI'd like to let everyone know that we have launched our Fourth Branch, http://www.fourthbranch.us http://www.fourthbranch.us, for use and testing. It took us longer than planned to move to production, but our initial version is considerably better than what we previously intended. In a nutshell, Fourth Branch will act exactly as that: The fourth branch of government. The emphasis on publicizing legislation and providing government transparency has lead us to develop this. Unlike anything to date, we are going to utilize proven social networking practices and focus it on legislation and issues that require public input. We are looking for any and all comments, criticism and feedback to help us develop quickly. Thanks!
- rrhyne 18y agoWhere did I say the bill would end graft and pork? I didn't. What I'd like is the kind of transparency that could out the graft and pork to the American people. With enough outrage over the crud tucked away in this thing, maybe we can get decent people in the seats in the future. Read, instead of infer.
- dpifke 18y agoI think the last item on the FAQ is probably the most interesting for hackers: Q: Is the spending data on recovery.gov available in a format (like XML) that developers can use to create mashups and gadgets? A: Not at this time. But, as new systems are developed to capture the allocations and expenditures under the Act, we plan to make that data available in exportable form.
- CalmQuiet 18y agoI find it refreshing that they even recognize this question: a stark contrast to past federal "know-nothing" approaches to hacking & tech.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoI'm glad their words are starting to catch up to the Republican party's deeds: http://www.gop.gov/api http://www.gop.gov/api Open, competitive government is probably a good thing; the fact that different parts of the government are competing to see who can be more open is even better.
- acgourley 18y agoJust a note about that API that I read on a mailing list: "So far the GOP API is useless, most of the methods do not work and the ones that do are still having issues. I've spoken to the gop.gov team about this and they informed me they were forced to launch before these features were ready. Most of the data they offer though seems like it'll be member/bill data that is already widely available"
- byrneseyeview 18y agoI knew we could live up to our reputation! (Thanks for the update)
- thesethings 18y agoAside: I hear via twitter that it's running Drupal.
- antipax 18y agoIt's true: http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/recoverygov-uses-jquery-on-drupal/ http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/recoverygov-uses-jquery-o...
- lisp_padawan 18y agoLooks like it, there's mention of drupal in a javascript call near the bottom of the source. Nice clean html too from a quick glance - wonder if this is the same team as did Obama's election site, similar visual style. Good stuff.
- cjoh 18y agoIt isn't. Blue State would never use Drupal. Blue State uses Expression Engine and their own suite of tools.
- thesethings 18y agoHmm. The URLs are pretty tell-tale Drupal: * http://www.recovery.gov/modules/pathauto/pathauto.js http://www.recovery.gov/modules/pathauto/pathauto.js * http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/impact http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/impact (Though Drupal is fully capable of having pretty URLs that would have made that less visible.)
- cjoh 18y agoOh, it is very clearly Drupal. That was not the intent of the comment. The intent of the comment was that it is Drupal, and thus Blue State Digital (the BarackObama.com web vendor) was not behind the construction of the site.
- thesethings 18y ago
- gills 18y ago"Mission Accomplished" ...
- jonknee 18y agoNeat to see all the open source software being used (Apache, PHP, MySQL, Drupal, jQuery, MIT Simile Timeline, etc). And once again YouTube is front and center. Mix in an API and they'll be rocking.
- jmatt 18y agoThis is part of the bill^. SEC. 1201. TRANSPARENCY REQUIREMENTS. (b) (1) (A) Each such agency shall notify the public of funds obligated to particular infrastructure investments by posting the notification on the website Recovery.gov. [Continues from there... details at SEC. 1226. RECOVERY.GOV.] This site improves accessibility but not transparency. All congressional bills are already readily available... but it's limited to watchdogs and those few that are motivated enough to find and read them. ^ http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/RecoveryBill01-15-09.pdf http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/RecoveryBill01-15-09.pdf EDIT: Formatting.
- indiejade 18y agoCoincidentally, the Wiki on TransparentAccounting.org also went "live" today: http://www.transparentaccounting.org/wiki/us http://www.transparentaccounting.org/wiki/us The words "accountability" and "transparency" (from Recovery.org) do seem to be used much more frequently by the Obama Administration than its predecessor. This makes me think that the wiki just might work. I don't know how much work needs to be done on a wiki before blowing the kazoos and writing the press releases. What might be the best way to go about building the site? Starting with abbreviations seems like a good idea, as it seems both techies and government people love the acronyms. Any and all thoughts / ideas / opinions are welcome.
- adatta02 18y agoUnfortunately "Q: Is the spending data on recovery.gov available in a format (like XML) that developers can use to create mashups and gadgets? A: Not at this time. But, as new systems are developed to capture the allocations and expenditures under the Act, we plan to make that data available in exportable form" http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/frequently-asked-questions#17 http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/frequently-asked-question...
- euroclydon 18y agoWhy do Tax Cuts contain $61B for Protecting the Vulnerable when there is already a Protecting the Vulnerable category with $81B? Also, if Obama were really interested in transparency, he would direct the Treasury and Federal Reserve to comply with the FOIA requests made by the media regarding the TARP and the liquidity injections.
- yummyfajitas 18y agoBecause that lets politicians talk about $BIGNUM in "tax relief" and also $BIGNUM2 in "protecting the vulnerable"? Another fun fact, obscured by the headlines, is that "tax relief" includes wealth transfers from taxpayers to non-taxpayers (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/refundablecredit.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/refundablecredit.asp).
- ckinnan 18y agoIronic that Obama's approach to tech is open source and decentralized, but his approach to the economy is command and control.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agotransparent government isn't really a solution unless people are willing to act on the data. but we have already shown that this isn't the case. when people hear of corruption are the people involved outed? for the most part no.
- TFrancis 18y agoI don't think that's fair. Exposing government data in general will allow people (citizens, consumers, whatever...) to see _systemic_ corruption. Often when we hear of corruption, it is represented as a single point (politician X, company y, etc...) of failure in the democratic system. Exposing data like thins allows the citizenry to be data driven instead of anecdotal and emotional. I think that's the important break from past governmental practices.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agomaybe young people see it as a single failure. most people over the age of 30 know better. besides, what is the punishment model of our democracy? voting the other party in? yeah, that works. I vote for a return of the public gallows.
- TFrancis 18y agoI think you and I are in agreement. The feedback mechanism of the republic is broken because there is no punishment. You are correct when you say, "most people over the age of 30 know better." However, I believe that people under 30 understand that too. The difference with making data publicly available is that we can _quantify_ how systemic the problem is. Punishment to our representatives is difficult the same way it is difficult to punish most white collar crimes--it's easy to perform complected book cooking in ways that most can't follow. Making the data available will allow people with those abilities to monitor activity in the public. Or put another way, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." I think once the hard evidence is in we'll see less and less of the party support mechanisms because the corruption can be so easily proven that congress critters will scatter once a little light is shown on their dirty deeds. Then new (possibly younger) data-driven representation will take their place. In my rough back-of-no-envelope estimation, this will take at least a generation.
- newmediaclay 18y agoVery cool site. They're using opensource Javascript from MIT's Simile Project to power the timeline at the bottom. Good incorporation of an existing, powerful opensource resource: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/recoverygovs-javascript-timeline-graduated-from-mit http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/recoverygovs-javascrip...
- greyhat 18y agoThe design of this and whitehouse.gov drive me crazy. The gratuitous use of italics randomly in headings always seems to emphasize the wrong part of the sentence. Right on the front page of this site we have "Your money AT work". Now why on earth would you emphasize the least important word in the phrase? It makes it sound like someone who can't quite make out some handwriting is narrating the page. Maybe a minor nitpick that not everyone notices, but in my case I find it really detracts from the readability and professional veneer these sites are trying to achieve.
- greyhat 18y agoRead the fine print(!): * Tax Relief - includes $15 B for Infrastructure and Science, $61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $25 B for Education and Training and $22 B for Energy, so total funds are $126 B for Infrastructure and Science, $142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $78 B for Education and Training, and $65 B for Energy. So the largest bubble, tax relief, actually includes the other bubbles? Wouldn't the normal expectation that if there is one large bubble marked tax relief that it actually represent tax relief and not science spending? Or is that just an almost transparent attempt to pander to people who want tax cuts? Help me understand this!
- greyhat 18y agoFor a much more insightful breakdown, http://stimuluswatch.org/ http://stimuluswatch.org/ has a pretty interesting listing that allows people to vote, comment, and offer arguments for and against individual items.
- bdittmer 18y agoThis is transparency after the fact. The actual bill was only available for review for something like 10 hours before it was voted on and passed. 1100 pages in 10 hours? Great. This information should available on ALL bills at least a week before the bill is voted on by congress. I for one am appalled at how this thing was driven through.