US Gov. Launches Web Site To Track IT Spending 58
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kdawson
from the how-much-for-the-retractable-drink-holders dept.
from the how-much-for-the-retractable-drink-holders dept.
andy1307 writes "Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, announced on Tuesday a new Web site designed to track more than $70 billion in government IT spending, showing all contracts held by major firms within every agency. The (Flash-heavy) site, USAspending.gov, shows detailed information about whether IT contracts are being monitored and budgets being met. The data also show which contracts were won through a competitive process or in a no-bid method (the latter approach is criticized by good-government advocates for excluding firms from business opportunities). Each prime contractor is listed as well as the status of that project; sub-contractors are not yet shown."
Re:Okay what about military, etc? (Score:3, Interesting)
The 20k toilet seat. Wasn't because company A sold it to the government for 20k. It was from all the bureaucracy that went to approve it.
How much.. (Score:4, Interesting)
of that $70 billion was spent developing that site? :p
I'm Not Going to Lie (Score:5, Interesting)
2 NEW YORK STATE DEPT OF HEALTH NY $18,335,672,042 Percent of total: 5.764%
3 TEXAS HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION TX $13,514,862,175 Percent of total: 4.248%
4 PENNSYLVANIA DEPT OF PUBLIC WELFARE PA $11,168,181,944 Percent of total: 3.511%
The other states fall in at around or less than 1%. I understand those states are high population but that should mean more tax income to the state. So you're telling me that someone who lives in Minnesota is paying Federal taxes to support New York Health Dept and Texas Human Services Dept? I really don't like that when states like Texas are all about "smaller government" and "lower taxes" or that people flock to NYC to be at the "center of the world" yet their taxes don't reflect that cost and other states pick it up. So what, you just shift your debt off to other states and freeload on Federal relief? From the data, around 2007 this started becoming a huge disparity between states. Why? You switched to Vista? Ridiculous.
Re: How much.. (Score:4, Interesting)
And how much productivity blown off today, as people try to figure out how to use it, then search it for projects they can complain about.
But here's the kicker:
"I talked to the CIO Council and saw the data change overnight," Kundra said. "It was cleaned up immediately when people realized it was going to be made public."
Wonder how much of the data changed in the "looks better now" direction.
A good first step towards accountability (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good first step towards accountability.
Personally, I'd like to vote on the overall budget expenditures for the big 20 departments. We shouldn't be surprised when departments and programs we love don't get much funding while others we dislike very much do. Most citizens don't have any valid idea how much money goes into any program. Most think we spend 50% on the military and 10% on NASA. Those numbers were significantly lower a few years ago (22%/0.5%). The thing that bothers me most is Social Security is like 55% of the total budget. That's just crazy. Wild swings in spending shouldn't be allowed even if we vote. No more than a 5% change in any department per year, so they can smoothly transition to the next annual budget amounts up or down.
We need to carefully monitor http://it.usaspending.gov/?q=content/investments-rated-agency [usaspending.gov] until all of them are reporting. Only a few (less than 5) out of 30+ departments are currently reporting.
Perhaps I'm crazy.