The much-touted website, Recovery.gov, is up and running. I got some (somewhat deserved) grief for dissing the site, designed to track stimulus spending, when President Obama first mentioned it. The site was blank, reflecting the fact that the stimulus bill had yet to pass. My point, which I didn’t articulate very well, is why waste the valuable, president-touted real estate with a blank page when you could use it to promote the bill before it becomes a lens into how the money is spent after the bill becomes law. That said, it’s up and running now and meeting mixed reviews. Nancy Scola at techPresident has a take on what’s working and what’s not on the site.
The larger question of transparency in government and whether technology can bring a real change is being pursued by a lot of smart people including Ellen Miller at the Sunlight Foundation, Micah Sifry at techPresident, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame. Will be following all of this in the coming weeks because it’s so essential to Obama’s promises of changing Washington.
