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So going through this I now know that the Department of Health and Human Services Invests in something called the “ACF Expanded Federal Parent Locator Service”

So going through this I now know that the Department of Health and Human Services Invests in something called the “ACF Expanded Federal Parent Locator Service” which in turn has a project called “Effective Management of Human Capital/Information Technology/Resources” whose goal is to “Maintain FPLS Benefit-To-Cost Ratio greater than 75:1”. A goal that Michael Carleton, the CIO of that agency, considers met so far. But I don’t know how much money was spent on that particular project or where that money actually went or what the individual goals were or why the CIO thinks those goals have been met thus far. So while I’m still willing to give Mr. Kundra and the Obama administration some leeway to do better in the future this doesn't impress me. Right now it’s just some pretty Ajax wrapped around overall department info I could have already gotten in PDF format from the congressional budget office.

pavs 17y ago
Maybe you should read this: http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/upcoming-features http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/upcoming-features and http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq and http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq-agencies http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq-agencies As it clearly mentions right next to the logo, the site is in beta.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  A beta test is supposed to show you functionality. Otherwise there would be no point (why give something to others to test if it lacks the lion share of the functionality). In fact, a Beta Test is designed to illicit user feedback about the program's functionality which is exactly what I gave. I'm saying "if this is the promised functionality then it is insufficient" Beyond that the upcoming features page doesn't address anything that I said. Under the "More Data" section they do just the opposite, they promise more of the same by saying " Agency CIOs will continue ranking their investments in the coming months" and "linking more investment data to awarded contracts" (I didn't even address the FAQ pages because they're so vague that they basically don't say anything) I was saying the assessment of the CIO in charge of a project and the fact that I can see what contract an investment is linked to is insufficient without knowing why the CIO approves and how much money is actually represented by each award contract. One last point, the info I'm talking about is just "how much money was allocated to each project" That's not a functionality issue it's just another field in a database. Don't you think the CIOs who are doing these assessments needed the total money spent to do them? Couldn't they just have put the totals in the database while entering their assessment values in? Doesn't the fact that they didn't mean the actual totals are purposely being withheld?
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Well, it's more like an alpha than a beta at the moment, but I like where it's going. I think the key benefit here is that it's not something compiled from a static .pdf like an NYT visualization, but something based on feeds which aims to provide a dynamic window into what's going on. Considering how opaque government spending and budgeting is for most people, this constitutes significant progress in transparency and timely reporting, even though as presented it's rather clunky. Personally, I'd be happy if this met the goals of being comprehensive and responsive by the end of the administration's term. I note too that they've got feeds for everything so if you had better ideas for visualization the data sources are being made available. BTW you want to 'elicit' user feedback; 'illicit' would be spending the project funds on tickets to Disneyland instead of building out the website.

pavs 17y ago

Maybe you should read this: http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/upcoming-features http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/upcoming-features and http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq and http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq-agencies http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/faq-agencies As it clearly mentions right next to the logo, the site is in beta.

TomOfTTB 17y ago
A beta test is supposed to show you functionality. Otherwise there would be no point (why give something to others to test if it lacks the lion share of the functionality). In fact, a Beta Test is designed to illicit user feedback about the program's functionality which is exactly what I gave. I'm saying "if this is the promised functionality then it is insufficient" Beyond that the upcoming features page doesn't address anything that I said. Under the "More Data" section they do just the opposite, they promise more of the same by saying " Agency CIOs will continue ranking their investments in the coming months" and "linking more investment data to awarded contracts" (I didn't even address the FAQ pages because they're so vague that they basically don't say anything) I was saying the assessment of the CIO in charge of a project and the fact that I can see what contract an investment is linked to is insufficient without knowing why the CIO approves and how much money is actually represented by each award contract. One last point, the info I'm talking about is just "how much money was allocated to each project" That's not a functionality issue it's just another field in a database. Don't you think the CIOs who are doing these assessments needed the total money spent to do them? Couldn't they just have put the totals in the database while entering their assessment values in? Doesn't the fact that they didn't mean the actual totals are purposely being withheld?
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Well, it's more like an alpha than a beta at the moment, but I like where it's going. I think the key benefit here is that it's not something compiled from a static .pdf like an NYT visualization, but something based on feeds which aims to provide a dynamic window into what's going on. Considering how opaque government spending and budgeting is for most people, this constitutes significant progress in transparency and timely reporting, even though as presented it's rather clunky. Personally, I'd be happy if this met the goals of being comprehensive and responsive by the end of the administration's term. I note too that they've got feeds for everything so if you had better ideas for visualization the data sources are being made available. BTW you want to 'elicit' user feedback; 'illicit' would be spending the project funds on tickets to Disneyland instead of building out the website.