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Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

nytimes.com

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Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#171

Post by bigtimeidiot »

justin66 wrote: post #107
jliptzin wrote: post #53

Today I filed my tax return showing all the money that came in and every minute expense required to make that money. Why can't we hold the government to the same standard? There should be one (huge) annual spreadsheet published showing how much money came in (federal, state, and local levels), with a detailed accounting of where every penny went, just like I am required to do for my business to claim deductions.

> federal, state, and local levels (don't forget the counties!) The reason that cannot work is that when you get below the state level, you're dealing with governments that might or might not have enough money and motivation to do proper accounting, staffed by people who might or might not have actually gone to college. Mandating they contribute to the "national spreadsheet" would represent an unprecedented impositio…

>you're dealing with governments that might or might not have enough money and motivation to do proper accounting, staffed by people who might or might not have actually gone to college.

I get the impression there are swaths of the HackerNews audience who have no idea how "the other half" lives in places outside of the major urban centres.

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#172

Post by thr0waway1239 »

ceejay wrote: post #165

Granted, I don't yet know the scope of the project precisely (ie. how detailed and how much information was collected), but if it's as big as I think it is, Steve Ballmer has instantly become one of my favorite people currently inhabiting this planet.

It was created by someone who was at Microsoft. If the past is any indicator, you will see a splashy introduction, the follow-up and follow-through will be horrendous, and in the end everyone will hold their noses and still use it anyway.

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#175

Post by mingodad »

movedx wrote: post #161
barking wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optics are good but it's effectively useless in determining whether money is being spent wisely or not. It only gives a very high level picture. It would need to allow one to go a whole lot deeper for people to be able to work out what is value and what isn't. How does the office of taoiseach spend €182 million per annum, for example? It should be possible to see exactly where the money was spent all the way down…

> It should be possible to see exactly where the money was spent all the way down to an invoice With that level of visibility ("down to an invoice"), it's easy for people to take up pitch forks and begin lambasting teachers, for example, for their spending on computer software, materials for class, and so on. Perhaps a doctor's medical decisions would start being questioned left, right, and centre, yet the people doi…

Sorry but if the public fund it they should be able to see it, what's the point to pay blindly ?

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#176

Post by rayiner »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #139
afsina wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, many people who make those blanket statements (such as myself) also believe governments, especially big-centralized ones cannot be fixed. These kind of data is good, it may be an eye opener for some. But governments will find loop holes to make those spendings look like justified. Most people will be fine with it anyway. Look at the authors response: "Oh there are 10 million public school teachers, those are n…

At the same time, more specific data is always better. Soon he'll realize the slim margins that go to actual teachers, and see that most of it goes to boards, etc.

Nope. 80% of per school expenditures goes to salary and benefits, with the overwhelming majority for instruction rather than administration: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmb.asp.

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#178

Post by justin66 »

dboreham wrote: post #138
white-flame wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the individual & small business tax filing level, you're also dealing with people who might not have money or motivation to do proper accounting, who might not have actually gone to college. But they're still required to file everything properly, no matter how complex their personal/business taxes get.

I'm traveling and can't find the article but I recall reading recently in the local paper about someone in local government in Montana who was either being fired or prosecuted for failing to keep accurate records about transactions. This was revealed in some audit the state requires, iirc. Anyway the gist is that it isn't the case that city government people simply don't have to keep proper financial records.

> Anyway the gist is that it isn't the case that city government people simply don't have to keep proper financial records.

That's one local government of tens of thousands. I'd be less optimistic about, say, a rural county in West Virginia, or something like that, having anything like proper financial records and the motivation to provide them.

The kind of governments I'm skeptical about aren't hugely important for a top-down analysis of the country's finances simply because they're financially the least wealthy. What I'm surprised about is how optimistic everyone is about the nation's recordkeeping and how everyone assumes that every government works roughly the same way. I've heard horror stories about counties that cannot even keep track of who owns what land/mineral rights, and sometimes have their own corrupt reasons for not trying very hard. The world will need to change before some of those places are motivated to improve.

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#179

Post by 1wheel »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Oh this is fascinating. I can't wait for people to slice and dice this up and show all kinds of data and analysis. This reminds me of how the NBA opened up the data stores from Sport Vu analytics and other advanced statistics and how much we learned from it by all the people on the web looking at it and thinking about it, sorting it and analyzing it in many different ways to see things no one had seen before. That ha…

The NBA stopped posting the Sport Vu data early last year - I don't think it is coming back.

Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US

#180

Post by 1wheel »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Oh this is fascinating. I can't wait for people to slice and dice this up and show all kinds of data and analysis. This reminds me of how the NBA opened up the data stores from Sport Vu analytics and other advanced statistics and how much we learned from it by all the people on the web looking at it and thinking about it, sorting it and analyzing it in many different ways to see things no one had seen before. That ha…

The NBA stopped posting the Sport Vu data early last year - I don't think it is coming back.
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