Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by sunir » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:19 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #169

movedx wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> it's easy [...] lambasting teachers, for example, for their spending on computer software And maybe it's a good thing. > do you like being micro managed at your job? You are conflating micromanagement with financial control. In democratic societies, public work is done under public scrutiny. Taxpayers have constitutional rights to review budgets and complain to elected politicians. Private citizens and companies ha…

Constitutional rights? Doubt it.

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

#202

Post by 24gttghh » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:24 PM UTC

mr_overalls wrote: post #177

theduncan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

www.data.gov works for me

Ditto; are there specific pages people are trying and not working?

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

#203

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:25 PM UTC

Delmania wrote: post #190

mistersys wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His approval rating was highest his first week as president: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

That's because he fired missiles in Syria and detonated the MOAB in Afghanistan. Whenever a president commits an act of war against a publicly perceived threat, their ratings get a temporary boost.

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by vitorbaptistaa » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:28 PM UTC

_Disclaimer: I work for Open Knowledge International and have worked on OpenSpending in the past_

If you're interested in public spending data, take a look at OpenSpending (https://openspending.org/). It's a project that aims to make exploring, visualizing, and searching spending data easier. It's all free software (https://github.com/openspending) and you can upload your own datasets or explore others. It also provides you with an API, so you can use it to build finance-related projects (e.g. http://orcamento.inesc.org.br)

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

#205

Post by Fifer82 » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:32 PM UTC

Just incase there isn't already enough other links. This one is for the US / UK / Czech Republic

I liked the style.

https://www.wikibudgets.org/

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

#206

Post by 24gttghh » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:40 PM UTC

>With an unlimited budget, he went about hiring a team of researchers in Seattle and made a grant to the University of Pennsylvania to help his staff put the information together. Altogether, he has spent more than $10 million between direct funding and grants.

$10 million spent so far just trying to figure out what the collective governments in the US is spending money on. Is this an argument for privatization or a failure of government to provide this information succinctly itself?

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

#207

Post by outsidetheparty » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

mr_overalls wrote: post #177

theduncan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

www.data.gov works for me

Quite a few links, including the "Contact" page for every topic, are just showing an error message "Data.gov encountered an unexpected error. We apologize for this inconvenience and assure you that work is underway to correct this problem. Please check back in 15 minutes and thank you for using Data.gov." (which appears to be the same text they show as their generic 404 message.) For example https://www.data.gov/contact and https://www.data.gov/climate/faq

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

#208

Post by thatwebdude » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #51

I'd love to see the same thing done with the health care industry. I have a pet hypothesis that the financial complexity of the industry is one of the barriers to reducing costs: Nobody knows what's being spent on what, and to whom. Everybody can claim that somebody else is gouging us.

> Everybody can claim that somebody else is gouging us.

I feel this is the case more and more...

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

#209

Post by rjtavares » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

24gttghh wrote: post #206

>With an unlimited budget, he went about hiring a team of researchers in Seattle and made a grant to the University of Pennsylvania to help his staff put the information together. Altogether, he has spent more than $10 million between direct funding and grants. $10 million spent so far just trying to figure out what the collective governments in the US is spending money on. Is this an argument for privatization or a…

Why do you believe an equivalent effort to figure out what the private sector is spending money on would be cheaper?

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

#210

Post by pizza » Tue, Apr 18, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

mulletbum wrote: post #185

ekianjo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they could put a black box for such expenses and still give the detail for everything else.

Wouldn't people be able to deduce the spend on this black box section?

https://openspending.org/black-budget