Thinktank Aims To Crowdsource Government Earmark Analysis 100
Al writes "The Sunlight Foundation, based in Washington, DC, hopes to raise an army of web volunteers to analyze all the earmarks in government bills. The group's new Sunlight Labs transparency corps invites users to join an effort to analyze the information collaboratively. Users are presented with PDFs released by hundreds of different offices and asked to enter the pertinent information like the date and dollar amount of a request, name of the requester, description of the project, and so on. These then become part of a searchable database. The project's launch roughly coincided with the launch earlier this month of the government's new IT Dashboard. But this tool is somewhat limited — users can find the primary recipients of IT project funding, but not subcontractors; it's not easy to discern the origins of contracts or their geographic distribution, and it's almost impossible to see how they are connected to elected officials."
it is a really cool project (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score:3, Insightful)
There should be a law that agencies enter this information themselves.
as much as it sounds interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, if there is a groundswell against earmarks, I wonder how it's going to affect projects which at first glance don't look worthwhile. I think it would disproportionately affect science and the arts as they're often seen as luxuries rather than necessities.
Re:as much as it sounds interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they should get their own bill. Spending for the arts shouldn't be tacked on a defense bill just like a new weapon shouldn't be tacked on to a arts bill.
Re:it is a really cool project (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it is a really cool project (Score:3, Insightful)
contrary to popular opinion, the big difference between lobbyists and ordinary voters isn't money (although money matters), it is access to information on a timely basis. Putting information online will have a huge impact on the legislative process.
One problem, though, is that there can be an insanely short time between when a bill comes out of committee, and when it's put up for a vote. One vile lesson that both Democrats and Republicans have learned is that members will vote on a bill (rather than abstain), even if they have only several hours to review thousands of pages.
Unless this crowd-sourcing can review bills fast enough for even well-intentioned legislators to be aware of important reasons to vote 'no', I think it will do little good.
Anyone interested in this issue should check out Read the Bill [readthebill.org].
Re:Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
Re:it is a really cool project (Score:4, Insightful)
You think that the pharmaceutical companies spent $40 million dollars lobbying the health care process [npr.org], because they had extra cash laying around? With that money they got exactly what they wanted out of the process, while average Joe Voter is probably not going to have the same success even with these tools.
Earmarks are only a small part of the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
The current leaders in Congress have been saying for the last couple of weeks that it is unreasonable to expect Congressional Representatives to read the bills before they vote on them because they don't have the time and even if they did have the time, they couldn't understand them.
Well.... it is unreasonable to expect that.
Then they need to craft laws that they can understand, or resign and leave the job to someone who will (or who can comprehend the laws being proposed).
If a legislator cannot understand a law that is put before him/her, that legislator should vote against it. If the bill is too big to read through before voting on it, the legislator should vote against it. If there isn't enough time to keep up with the legislation being put forward, then too much legislation is being put forward.
Re:A step in the right direction (Score:3, Insightful)
At least they're going this far. Imagine this happening under the Bush office. Nope, I didn't think you could.
P.S. I am *not* an Obama fanboi.
Um... the Bush Office didn't write bills. That job falls solely under the Congressional branch of the US government. The "Bush Office" falls under the Executive Branch, just like every other president.
People give the president too much credit/blame. All the president does is sign the bills. Congress writes them and sends them to the Prez. The Prez can either sign or veto.
Please refer to the following educational video [youtube.com] for future reference. :-)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I can't understand the consequences of my decisions at my job, then I am considered incompetent.
How is it different for legislators?
If the system is such that it simply does not allow enough time to actually comprehend the full amount of draft, then the process needs to be changed.
It is simply unacceptable that our representatives vote on bills that they can not fully understand and comprehend.
Re:Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
We already pay people to read legislation (Score:5, Insightful)
But can wee trust them not to filter the data (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm all for exposure to the public of this type of data, but, can we trust them not to filter the data to forward their own political agenda. I think not. Like every group in Washington, they will filter out the sins of the people whose views they support while exposing the sins of those whose views they oppose.
Also, can we trust that the "Crowd" they attract to sift out this data will not be partisan in what they record. Again, I think not.
I've been watching this crap play out for half a century and studied the games that went on for the half century before that and it is always the same old crap. The design of our system of government perpetuates it.
we agree! (Score:4, Insightful)
I work at the Sunlight Foundation (though not on this project), and I feel I can safely say that we completely agree with you that the government *should* be issuing this data in a more easily usable format.
To be fair, though, it's not always as easy as all that: when you introduce such an infrastructure you need to make sure there are staff resources to handle the data entry, training available to help them do it, and somebody checking the overall data quality. My project's been looking at a lot of grant data, and we've consistently found that the central grant data directory -- a data set called FAADS -- is of lower quality than the reports issued on each program's website in excel, PDF, HTML tables or who knows what else. It doesn't make a lot of sense to people like you and me, but centralized systems really do introduce an added layer of difficulty for the data entry people. Just keeping track of the endless requirements imposed by legislation can be pretty daunting.
...none of which is to say that this shouldn't happen. It should! But it does explain why "publish earmarks" and "publish earmarks in a central location, in a machine-readable format" are two different things, and why the latter is more difficult to successfully ask for. We'll get there, though.