America’s first chief information officer Vivek Kundra launched the new spending dashboard on his website Data.gov Tuesday, which should bring transparency to government-funded information technology projects. Kundra, who previously demo’d the platform at Wired’s first-ever business conference on June 15th, announced it again Tuesday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in Manhattan.
The purpose of the spending dashboard is accountability. Viewers will be able to track the progress of government-funded IT progress. More than that, they’ll be able to point fingers. There’s a little thumbnail picture of the CIO and contact information next to each project’s page. People who are unsatisfied with the way things are moving can write in.
At this stage, Kundra and his team have thrown the data up, and hoped that America will work out the kinks. “This is version 1.0, we’ve launched it in beta and we’re going to continue to innovate and ad more and more features.” One feature that he emphasized was a feedback loop, so that the site won’t just be about exposure, but also creating a dialogue.
We’ll have to send them some of our truly nutball commenters.
