Steve Ballmers stealth startup to provide insight on gov spending

[baydude]

On Tuesday, Mr. Ballmer plans to make public a database and a report that he and a small army of economists, professors and other professionals have been assembling as part of a stealth start-up over the last three years called USAFacts. The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments.

Want to know how many police officers are employed in various parts of the country and compare that against crime rates? Want to know how much revenue is brought in from parking tickets and the cost to collect? Want to know what percentage of Americans suffer from diagnosed depression and how much the government spends on it? That’s in there. You can slice the numbers in all sorts of ways.

Mr. Ballmer calls it “the equivalent of a 10-K for government,” referring to the kind of annual filing that companies make.

“You know, when I really wanted to understand in depth what a company was doing, Amazon or Apple, I’d get their 10-K and read it,” he told me in a recent interview in New York. “It’s wonky, it’s this, it’s that, but it’s the greatest depth you’re going to get, and it’s accurate.”

In an age of fake news and questions about how politicians and others manipulate data to fit their biases, Mr. Ballmer’s project may serve as a powerful antidote. Using his website, USAFacts.org, a person could look up just about anything: How much revenue do airports take in and spend? What percentage of overall tax revenue is paid by corporations? At the very least, it could settle a lot of bets made during public policy debates at the dinner table.

More here
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/...llmer-serves-up-a-fascinating-data-trove.html

 

[Homerboy]

Was just coming here to post this. Should be an interesting data dump

 

[vi edit]

Very cool. DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS.

Yay. Developers. And Steve Ballmer seems like a guy that would be awesome to hang out with outside of the office. Not sure how much real change will be driven by his efforts, but applaud the attempt at trying to chunk down just how far our tax base goes and to where.

 

[pauldun170]

My expectation is that legislators, lobbyist and various jerkoff will soon be introducing legislation to hamper Mr. Balmers efforts.
Very soon. Both publicly and discretely.

 

[brycejones]

My expectation is that legislators, lobbyist and various jerkoff will soon be introducing legislation to hamper Mr. Balmers efforts.
Very soon. Both publicly and discretely.

Open records laws and FOIA should prevent most of that. But your point is well taken and something that will need to guarded against.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

My expectation is that legislators, lobbyist and various jerkoff will soon be introducing legislation to hamper Mr. Balmers efforts.
Very soon. Both publicly and discretely.

Might have already, considering the cloudflare 'offline' error I'm getting.

Anyone else able to 'do stuff' beyond the main page?

 

[pauldun170]

Open records laws and FOIA should prevent most of that. But your point is well taken and something that will need to guarded against.

Nothing a little redactin and classifying info as "classified" to help protect the citicens from the terrorist.
You wouldn't want the terrorist to use this data to kill the freedom children, would you?

 

[pauldun170]

If there is one thing we should expect from elected officials, its that they don't like the idea of these guys using facts and data to ruin their talking points and messing up deals that took a lot of all expense paid for dinners and golf outings to work out

 

[brycejones]

Nothing a little redactin and classifying info as "classified" to help protect the citicens from the terrorist.
You wouldn't want the terrorist to use this data to kill the freedom children, would you?

I love the first one appears to be a press release that was redacted to hell and gone.

The saving grace here is since this concerns budget matters by law those are very open in just about every jurisdiction I can think of. It's probably the hardest at the federal level around the various pieces of the security apparatus.

 

[pauldun170]

I love the first one appears to be a press release that was redacted to hell and gone.

The saving grace here is since this concerns budget matters by law those are very open in just about every jurisdiction I can think of. It's probably the hardest at the federal level around the various pieces of the security apparatus.

Every once in awhile I'll get a bug up my ass to go hunting through reporting and budget requests to chase the money.
I can see that its one of those hobbies that leads to obesity and social awkwardness.
People that write that crap are too damn wordy...