Shortly after we posted our last blog entry (“Before the Phone Starts Ringing. . .) we heard from Eric W Alborg the Communications Director for the California Recovery Task Force.
He had some very germane thoughts about the federal government’s Recovery.gov website — and improvements he’d like to see made. We thought we’d share them with you here:
“There are several improvements that could be made to Recovery.gov that the California Recovery Task Force feels would be of great benefit to Californians in our effort to provide the utmost transparency,” he told us. “California would like to be able to download or obtain all of the inferred data, which includes everything in the posted data dictionary. We’d also like all of the Geocoded information, so that we can ensure we map projects and data correctly and have the ability to cross check. Lastly, we’d like to have a direct contact at Recovery.gov to address any errors or problems with California’s data that we find.”
Any thoughts on this topic from other states? We’d love to hear them.
Meanwhile, kudos to California for the redesign of its own Recovery Act website, which went live today. Included in the new site are: success stories that highlight the human impact of Recovery Act dollars in California; a resource that outlines special opportunities for small business, non-profits and disadvantaged business enterprises; and, most notably, a map that features ways to sort by county, city or area of investment such as education or transportation. It also features locations of every Recovery Act project in the state with project-specific information such as budget, recipient and project description.
Tags: accountability, transparency
