[open-government] Sunlight Foundation ID's $1.3T in "broken" federal spending data

Wed Sep 8 18:34:29 BST 2010

See:
http://Clearspending.com

From: Gabriela Schneider <gschneider at sunlightfoundation.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 11:37 AM
Subject: [sunlightlabs] Sunlight ID's $1.3T in "broken" federal spending data

Today, Sunlight announced Clearspending.com, a new website and
"scorecard" that analyzes how well U.S. government agencies are
reporting their spending data on USASpending.gov.

Sunlight's analysis reveals that more than $1.3 trillion in federal
reporting data from 2009 is broken. These data inaccuracies account
for half of the total $2.6 trillion in government spending data
reported last year. Clearspending offers a critique on the reliability
of data from USASpending.gov, across three metrics--consistency,
completeness and timeliness--and covers spending from 2007, 2008 and
2009.

You can read all about it over at Clearspending.com, and I hope you
will -- in addition to our analysis that looked at millions of rows of
data, we spent a lot of time talking to officials at all levels of the
reporting chain.

There's also a larger point about this analysis: it's not news -- not
really (especially to all of you).  Yet, instead of fixing those
problems, those responsible for USASpending.gov decided to build new
websites on top of the same lousy data, collecting superficial
plaudits from advocates who were excited about the apparent potential
of the site, but didn't have sufficiently direct access to the data to
see its flaws.

Sunlight's analysis isn't just about one website -- it's about the way
we keep tabs on our society's use of its resources. We shouldn't let
these systems become afterthoughts.

Read more from Sunlight's Executive Director Ellen Miller on our blog at:
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/09/08/clearspending-thats-what-we-need/

and from Sunlight Labs Director Tom Lee:
http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/clearspending-and-why-its-important/

I encourage you to give us your feedback in the comments section of our blog(s).

Cheers,
Gabriela

--
Gabriela Schneider
Communications Director
Sunlight Foundation
1818 N Street, NW Suite 300
WDC 20036
p: 202/742-1520 x 236
c: 202/746-0439
gschneider at sunlightfoundation.com
http://sunlightfoundation.com
http://twitter.com/stereogab

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