All of the US government's spending will soon be available on one website

[NobleSavage]

US government spending data can be a pain to track down; while much of it is publicly accessible, it's scattered across many agencies that have their own ways of presenting information. Soon, though, you won't have hunt for it at all. The recently signed DATA (Digital Accountability and Transparency) Act will publish all of that financial material on USASpending.gov in an easily readable, software-independent format. The law also calls for both more detailed budget data and a simplified set of reporting requirements.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/12/us-data-act/

I think this is a good. It will make research much easier.

 

[Blahface]

Great news. I always thought there should be a site that allows you to see how much a particular department is spending and being able to keep narrowing down the details. It would kind of be like seeing how much memory is being used in a folder when you look at the properties. You can then look inside that folder and see how that memory is being divided up among the sub-folders and get an idea of what is taking up what share of the memory.

 

[NobleSavage]

Great news. I always thought there should be a site that allows you to see how much a particular department is spending and being able to keep narrowing down the details. It would kind of be like seeing how much memory is being used in a folder when you look at the properties. You can then look inside that folder and see how that memory is being divided up among the sub-folders and get an idea of what is taking up what share of the memory.

Nice analogy!

 

[doubtingt]

For each report making valid use of this data, I expect 99 media articles that misuse and misrepresent it. Sure, its availability would mean that in theory such misuses will be easy to expose, but in reality that will rarely happen and not get the attention that the initial misuse got.

Raw absolute numbers are rather meaningless and to most people will just seem "really big", supporting an ideology of overspending. It would be nice if next to all raw numbers were the % of total government spending and % of GDP.

$800,000,000,000 seems like way too much for all education expenditures, while 5% of GDP does not.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The website is, however, going to be made by the same people who made the Obamacare website. This means that you won't actually be able to access the data, but it's the thought that counts and it was nice of them to make the website available.

 

[Clivedurdle]

Won't there be many areas of for example defence, security that do not go into much detail?

 

[Tigers!]

The website is, however, going to be made by the same people who made the Obamacare website. This means that you won't actually be able to access the data, but it's the thought that counts and it was nice of them to make the website available.

Oh come on mate, don't be like that. Perhaps they has learnt from their mistakes.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, I'm actually going to go with their not having learnt anything from their mistakes.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Ya, I'm actually going to go with their not having learnt anything from their mistakes.

More than likely, both sites have been in parallel development, two teams sharing resources, but with different symbols on their name tags. So they can prerepeat their mistakes, and saving the taxpayres oodles of time.