From Nextgov
Recovery.gov asks citizen developers for ways to improve site
Aliya Sternstein
The contractors that are refurbishing Recovery.gov have reached out to citizen developers for advice on how to make raw data available on the site, which the Obama administration plans to relaunch on Sept. 28.
The official stimulus-monitoring site is intended to show the public the results of the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress authorized in February to stimulate the economy, including the number of jobs created, the amount of money spent and timelines for projects down to the neighborhood level. But when the government published requirements for Recovery.gov this summer, some open government advocates voiced concerns that the spending data on the site would not be easily accessible to other sites....
Raymond Yee, a lecturer at the University of California's Berkeley School of Information, responded that he wants to see a list of "all the pots of money" that have been appropriated. "Now, Recovery.gov does list the amounts obligated and spent by agency, but how much money has been appropriated?" he wrote. "That basic data should be clearly documented at Recovery.gov, so that we can track the flow of money reliably from the originating legislation to Treasury out to the agencies and then to contractors and grantees or the states."
Yee's colleague, Eric Kansa, executive director of the information and service design program at the school, was one of the developers who criticized the proposed setup earlier this month. "They really seem to be working in a black-box, with little or no clear channel for public evaluation and feedback," he said at the time. "It sure would be nice to have greater transparency in the design and shaping of the transparency system."
On Friday, Kansa commended the contractors for seeking input from online transparency advocates. He cautioned that the developer community needs to be specific about technical recommendations, "and that takes a lot of time and effort, too." Kansa and his colleagues plan to share with the contractors a prototype of a suggested distribution model.