Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datagov_7_other_sites_to_shut_down_after_budgets_c.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d94f75bc010e25d%2C0

by apievangelist • 15 years ago

162 60 15 years ago

readwriteweb.com

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

More detail here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-t...

I haven't made any apps with data.gov, but I refer to it regularly for research material and statistical data and have found many useful resources that I would not have thought to look for otherwise. It's far from perfect, but seeing small improvements all the time and it's certainly easier to have a single resource for feed discovery.

Cutting the budget for this seems perverse, at best.

knowtheory4• 15 years ago

It is extremely ironic then, that the Canadian open data movement has held up the US as an example of transparency and openness, and a model for the sorts of disclosure that the Canadian federal government should live up to.

This is such a momentous leap backwards, i just don't know where to begin. There is no other source for this data. We're still figuring out the best use for it, but if the government doesn't provide it in this manner, the only way we're going to get access to it is via laborious and time consuming FOIA requests. And then, only if you know the data exists.

This really is fucked.

mberning• 15 years ago

I know what you mean. I find it incredibly frustrating that we HAPPILY go after minuscule savings on things like data.gov and NPR, meanwhile it is 100% taboo to talk about cutting big budget areas like the military. In my opinion we need to be looking at the big 3 because that is where we have the best opportunity to make significant improvements.

Defense

Social Security

Medicare/Medicaid

j_baker• 15 years ago

It sucks, but the truth of the matter is that cutting back Defense, Social Security, and Medicare are touchy issues that can't be done easily. Far easier to cut back things like data.gov, which will only upset a few Silicon Valley techies.

It seems to me that at this point, they're looking for politically low-hanging fruit rather than fiscally low-hanging fruit.

knowtheory4• 15 years ago

Yeah but you've got to remember that every program has a constituency.

The fact that we're the constituency, does mean that we have to temper our vociferousness with solid arguments and evidence. This stuff is important, but remember, there are programs out there to feed impoverished children. Is data.gov more important than that? Maybe not.

The point is though, that data.gov and open government data is, given our governing system should be more efficient, and provide better results than alternatives, such as making everyone go through FOIA or scraping individual agency sites, and relying on a patchwork quilt of agency disclosure.

Killing this program is going to cost more money in the future, and one very clear argument was articulated by David Eaves a couple days ago (http://eaves.ca/2011/03/30/access-to-information-is-fatally-... i also posted this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ).

This is terrible policy, but we do need to understand that the budget is a complicated beast.

adammichaelc• 15 years ago

If Congress were a typical family... Income: $40k Husband and wife arguing over whether to spend $80k or $79.9k.

These "cuts" are nothing more than talking points.

Duff6• 15 years ago

Think about what those things actually are. We're a post-industrial economy, since we don't make anything anymore, your "big 3" are the American equivalent of Bread & Circuses in Rome.

Defense. Job program for millions of workers.

Social Security. Welfare 2.0 -- after the Clinton welfare reform, you get bumped out of welfare after a few years. So people get declared "disabled" instead. Also, checks for grandma and checks for people with chronic disabilities.

Medicare. Healthcare for grandma. Welfare for big hospitals and doctors. Ever notice hospitals are always under construction? Medicare is what pays for it.

Medicaid. Healthcare for the indigent, and tool to make red state more appealing to business. (Protip: Compare Medicaid benefits in South Carolina to New York or Michigan.)

wladimir• 15 years ago

The interesting thing is that transparent data would allow for a more efficient and transparent government, as everyone could look for inefficiencies.

A web site is also the 21th century way of providing this data, who goes to request data from an archive as a stack of papers these days?

It's pretty ironic indeed that this gets shut down. Obama started all kinds of sensible things at the beginning of his term, and now pulls them back one by one.

jdp233• 15 years ago

Yeah really. It's almost like politicians in DC don't really want the information to be available ...

That said, the HN community makes a real point of how apolitical it is. Rather than organize and work with government transparency advocates to try to influence the system, the norms here discourage people from discussing politics. So it's pretty ironic to me to see all the disappointment about this here.

knowtheory4• 15 years ago

I really don't view this as a partisan issue, although in some senses it is political.

The problem is that both political parties pay lip service to openness and transparency (although my partisan biases would claim one party favors this more than the other), the real difficulty is hold politicians to their promises in the face of the sausage-making of daily federal politics.

But, to quote Napoleon, never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. I'm more than willing to believe that this is being left out of a sense of benign neglect.

That this is being neglected is much more indicative of what Congress's actual priorities are. :(

thwarted• 15 years ago

When it comes to website/software features or technology choices, we tell ourselves things like "there are many more grandmothers in the world than nerds" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389903) or "you're not the target demographic" or "you just don't understand what everyone else wants because you've got a technical bent" and "people don't want to use computers, they just want to get things done." But we still feel like we have a voice because we can speak with our capabilities and actually execute.

But when it comes to politics, where we recognize that our voices are small and we aren't empowered to do directly do anything and that what all the grandmothers want is going to overshadow what we want, we tell ourselves that we'd be able to affect change if only we got involved and became more political. Small voices have an uphill battle on trying to execute on political stuff.

If we have trouble communicating to people about what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to technology choices, we're going to have trouble communicating what's important (or what should be important) when it comes to things like government budgets or political positions. And I think we all recognize this. And that's why we're not politically involved and avoid discussing politics.

It's a waste of my time to have political discussions with almost everyone, it makes me feel bad about being a nerd and valuing things like rational discourse, the scientific method, and trying to being informed. I'd rather spend my time doing things that make feel good about being a nerd, and that's having discussions about technology things and not political things. Stereotypical technology discussions have the capability to advance the state of the art; stereotypical political discussions rarely advanced anything.

I think we also recognize that if you can't get people to take action on something obvious, such as that financing an expensive war machine is a massive waste and that we should spend more money on education, you're not going to have an easy time getting them to take action on something that's non-obvious. That being said, I think the value of transparency of government is obvious, but it's also hard to explain something that you find obvious to someone who doesn't also see that it's obvious.

DrHankPym• 15 years ago

Was Data.gov really that expensive to maintain? What is this cut really saving? $20 / month?

Ainab• 15 years ago

If you only consider hosting, but gathering data and formating takes more than $20.

ilikepi• 15 years ago

"over the last few years data.gov has cost $8.3 million; the cloud computing initiative has cost $1.4 million; and USASpending.gov has cost $13.3 million"

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/23/transparency-t...

So yeah, a bit more than $20/mo, but relative to the budget as a whole....

maxogden• 15 years ago

when released, data.gov was the largest RDF triple store in the world #funfact

baconner• 15 years ago

I don't think that's true.. when released I don't recall any rdf data being available on data.gov. the rdf initiative came way later, no? On release it was just a list of external data sources with links and metadata.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

from the sources it seems to be a doing of the House. Do we have any Republican here? Can such a person elaborate on the merits of this decision, please.

shawnee_• 15 years ago

Not a Republican, but I think what they are failing to recognize is that these websites are infrastructure in the same ways that highways are infrastructure. Would we bulldoze the Interstate Highway system if we couldn't afford to maintain it?

In the long term there are a lot of potential businesses to be built off the info these sites hold. For example: 379,939 raw and geospatial datasets on data.gov -- that's like 379,939 raw ingredients begging for a recipe to be made. One recipe = one business.

Republicans love business, business, business. So somebody with some brains needs to explain to them how these sites with raw data are good for businesses and potential businesses that can create jobs and grow the economy that they love to talk about.

Unless. . . the actual reason they are getting shut down is because the 'publicans have something to hide and they're worried what that transparency can reveal.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

The House basically controls funding, but I'd be interested to see who specifically voted in favour of cutting the programmes.

protomyth2• 15 years ago

to back kmfrk the US Constitution says in Article 1 Section 7 that "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives". This has grown a little in meaning: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_q125.html

jacoblyles• 15 years ago

I find myself voting for the GOP more and more as the US budget deficit yawns ever larger (please don't hate me for it), so perhaps I can shed some light on the issue.

Most likely cuts to these programs were included in a multi-thousand page budget bill. The Republicans elected to Congress had a choice between two budget bills, one of which spent $30 billion less. Following the will of the voters who granted them a historic electoral sweep in November, they chose to pass the smaller one. The decision to cut these particular programs was made by one of the hundreds of lobbyists, aides, and government agency employees that had a hand in writing the bill.

The congress people who voted for the cuts did not go down the list of federal programs making cost/benefit analyses to decide which programs to cut. Rather, they were presented a large package and asked to make a yes or no decision. Politics is not as rational as the rest of the entries in this discussion imply.

These information programs are tiny for now (though federal programs have a way of metastasizing) and they probably provide more benefit than cost. It is a bad policy decision to cut them, but if the alternative is making no cuts to the budget then the whole package may be worth it.

I agree that $30 billion of cuts does next to nothing to shrink the deficit. Sadly, there is little momentum behind my man Rand Paul’s proposal to cut $500 billion, or Paul Ryan’s roadmap to reduce future Social Security and Medicare deficits. The Republican leadership is playing budget theatre, passing tiny cuts that make them look good without touching the politically sensitive programs that really need shrinking. On the other hand the Democrats are playing budget denial, fighting to keep and expand every line item on the budget. Neither approach is very appealing to me. We need a plausible path to avoid national bankruptcy without raising taxes to uncompetitive levels.

jbooth3• 15 years ago

Not for nothing, but the last time we had a balanced budget there was a Democrat in the oval office. Expiring the Bush tax cuts would cut the deficit in about half over the next 10 years, and we could hit up the military, farm subsidies, actually send GE a tax bill and bank on a little GDP growth for the rest. It's actually not that hard to close if you're willing to look anywhere besides "cutting domestic discretionary even though THAT ENTIRE BUDGET is less than the deficit".

And, FWIW, many individual congressional republicans may have effectively had "a choice between 2 budget bills", but one of those bills (the one we're discussing) was entirely written by Republicans. So it's not like their hands were tied here, someone made the decision to go after this.

Duff6• 15 years ago

When control of congress is split, you routinely see wacky legislation coming out of the house. Why? The House is designed to be the "rabble", Congressmen have two year terms and their re-election campaigns start about 5 minutes after they are elected.

So what's happening now is that the Republicans are pumping out legislation that slashes and burns any discretionary spending that won't blow back and piss off their constituency. So farm subsidies are ok, but Obama initiatives whose constituency consists completely of left-wing "sunlight" groups are easy pickings.

It seems bizarre, but it really isn't worth getting too excited about. Lots of legislation is born in the House, but most legislation dies in the Senate. In fact, the strategic purpose of doing this is to get you excited and frantically calling your democratic Senator about your pet project.

It appears that the Republican intent is to shut down the government, or come real close to doing so. Why they want to do this is questionable, since Bill Clinton was able to use the shutdown in his era to neutralize the republican "revolution" in the Congress in the 90s. I figure the republicans are betting that Obama's crew will bungle their response, since they seem to lack competence and cohesion.

hendler• 15 years ago

I don't claim to understand. Maybe there are problems with the ambition of the project, not the cost. Or maybe not enough people actually use it.

But, shutting down a visionary (and probably inevitable) effort to open and modernize government feels like a backlash.

protomyth2• 15 years ago

I think a lot of the ire is more directed at recovery.gov and data.gov is caught in the crossfire.

jamesbkel• 15 years ago

What a shame.

I can't imagine there's a significant financial burden imposed by Data.gov (can't speak to the other services). I mean, the data collection certainly is the most expensive component... and from what I understand that keeps going independent of Data.gov. Presumably, the data is collected for programs beyond Data.gov - only more reason to keep maintaining the site since the marginal cost is minimal.

Data.gov has been a useful resource for both my own work (marketing & sociological research), but more importantly is a great way to find free, relevant data for cutting one's data analysis chops - either as student or professional.

As a stats nerd, I find this very depressing.

[edit: As an amusing aside regarding my "relevant" data comment. A few years ago I was trying to develop a viz technique that I knew some potential clients would like, but I lacked a good data set that fit the requirements. I eventually ended up using R and other various free tools to create visualizations of fish weight and length depending on various conditions such as geography, water temp and a few others I forget. I certainly learned a lot, but I certainly would have benefited by having a data set that was both relevant in the real world and met the contraints of my problem.]

pgdn• 15 years ago

"I can't imagine there's a significant financial burden imposed by Data.gov" You allude to what I think is the main question ... what are the actual costs of running this site? In an era of misinformation and judgment calls I think this knowledge is absolutely crucial. Anyone know where to look? I assume Data.gov itself wouldn't contain such valuable and transparent information :>

smogzer• 15 years ago

Well maybe they are putting together a better site that makes up for all of those and also enable the citizens to vote and/or give ideas where they want their money spent, or just enable the voters to keep the money if they do not have representation.

bmelton• 15 years ago

That is, I believe, the worst possible idea.

"[A democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury."

Duff6• 15 years ago

We're pretty much there. Probably 60% of the average family's spending is on housing, fuel and food. All of which are heavily subsidized.

tomjen34• 15 years ago

Sure, but he said where they want their money spent. That would kill plenty of lobbying, hopefully all of it.

eli2• 15 years ago

This is a misleading headline. Nothing has happened yet.

From the source article:

The White House requested $35 million for the e-government fund in 2011. The House allocated only $2 million in its bill, H.R. 1. The Senate, meanwhile, would provide $20 million for the e-government fund.

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2327798

It's a budget fight, similar to the ones going on at hundreds of agencies right now. There's a lot of posturing going on around the budget, but considering the project results in a net savings for the government, I hope that common sense will prevail.

anigbrowl2• 15 years ago

Agreed, but some of the sites are set to lose funding in a few weeks amid a febrile political atmosphere. My understanding is that the main expense areas are hosting/infrastructural overhead, developer salaries, and normal office/administrative overhead which is a fact of life in DC.

The pessimist in me thinks that keeping the inner workings of government in a state of murky obscurity furthers the interests of some more cynical politicians.

eli2• 15 years ago

This is a good point, but actually most of the federal government is set to lose funding and shut down next week unless something happens in Congress.

robryan• 15 years ago

For some programs, you would have to think the cost of governments time debating it is greater than the total amount they are debating? It probably has a decent sunk startup cost to I assume?

jbooth3• 15 years ago

Whatever happens, it's not going to be "common sense prevailing". The Republicans have publicly painted themselves into a corner where no matter what Obama presents, they have to demand an absurd number of cuts to domestic discretionary spending. If you figure the current proposed budget is halfway-reasonable, that means that the Republicans have to insist on cutting good, cost-effective programs like this -- playing around at the margins isn't enough.

jonhendry• 15 years ago

There's no common sense to be found, especially on the GOP side. There are a number of money-saving programs that they're trying to significantly defund, which would end up costing more than they save.

For instance, funding for poison control call centers. Instead of just calling up a call center, people who are afraid they or their kid has been poisoned would have to go to the emergency room, which is far more expensive even if it's a false alarm.

They're just making piddly penny-wise, pound-foolish cuts that will barely scratch the deficit.

andrewgleave• 15 years ago

This is very disappointing.

Later this month I'll be releasing the first open data project for the country where I currently live – the Isle of Man.

I used data.gov as an example of what can be done, why it's important, and also to get initial funding for the project.

motters• 15 years ago

Without transparency cronyism and bad governance can flourish.

neovive• 15 years ago

It wouldn't be surprising to see private tech companies sponsor or subsidize these programs going forward.

p09p09p09• 15 years ago

No problem, Wikileaks and Anonymous will pick up the slack.

Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut

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