A New Way to Watch the Recovery
Earlier today, I received an e-mailed invitation to an economic recovery house meeting. I went to the recovery website and printed out a list of suggested talking points:.
A couple quotes:
ACCOUNTABILITY: The Plan includes unprecedented accountability. All of the information on investments will be posted on www.recovery.gov so people can make sure their money is spent quickly and effectively in real time.
TAX CUTS: 95% of working families will receive a $1,000 tax cut.
These talking points are very concise and clear. More importantly, they create accountability. They make promises that are on the record, and they furthermore expect people to talk about these promises. Question these promises, even.
And yet, it still seems too glossed over. While it’s an interesting read, it only made me want to seek out unofficial sources, like this piece How Quickly Will the Stimulus Package be Spent? from http://www.fivethirtyeight.com.
Later this afternoon, I came across a post on the Sunlight Foundation Blog commenting on some changes to the bill provisions since the version released in January:
“The Senate has just posted the new version of the stimulus bill (Amendment 98 to HR 1), weighing in at well over 700 pages. Most notable for us are the online disclosure requirements, which have changed from the House version, which required the creation of Recovery.gov.”
The new language of the plan appears to be distancing itself from the requirements of a participatory and transparent online component to the stimulus package. Unfortunately, if a more generic web address is used and not all localities are required to participate in the online discussion, the Recovery.Gov site simply may not be able to get the momentum it needs to create a new precedent for political participation.
And that’s not even to mention that the original House version of this bill doesn’t have anything to say about making bulk data packages or APIs available to developers. As Paul Blumenthal wrote earlier today on the Sunlight Foundation site,
“At this point, I’m pretty much convinced that the White House web team must be bogged down in trying to sort through the various laws, rules, and regulations that govern their use of the web.”
That’s why it was especially wonderful indeed to see an example of how developers don’t have to wait for permission to start giving people more ways to learn about the stimulus plan.
StimulusWatch - located at http://www.stimuluswatch.org - is the brainchild of Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
“StimulusWatch.org was built to to help the new administration keep its pledge and to hold public officials to account. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects.”
“This site is interactive in a way we don’t expect to see in federal government sites. First, we are trying to gather knowledge from you about the worthiness of local projects before they are funded. Second, after a project has been funded we would like to continue to harness local knowledge about how the funds were spent and the project managed in order to keep local officials accountable. To date, no federal site does this.”
StimulusWatch allows you to search through stimulus projects by keyword, location, or program type. Of course, we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that Recovery.Gov doesn’t fail before it even has a chance to succeed, but it’s good to know that it’s not the only hope we have.
Update: Jerry Brito’s HACK, MASH, & PEER: CROWDSOURCING GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY is well worth the read.
