5 ms·

One of my biggest criticisms of DOGE that I have not heard elsewhere is - why can't we have a "Department of Government Transparency". Giving Elon the ability t

by bs7280 2mo ago

One of my biggest criticisms of DOGE that I have not heard elsewhere is - why can't we have a "Department of Government Transparency". Giving Elon the ability to judge, jury and executioner any congressionally approved spending he wants has its own legal issues, but I do think there is a lot of value in having a massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes. I envision something similar to a massive sankey diagram like dataset in a public git repo that anyone could access and audit. There is certainly lots of waste, but there is also loads of government spending where the value is not obvious.

Ferret7446 2mo ago
This was discussed pretty widely back when this all started. Creating a new department has a ton of overhead (government inefficiency) so they wanted to sidestep the process. The common narrative is that Trump didn't get anything done in his first term because he was hamstrung by all of the bureaucracy, hence why he is aggressively "shortcircuiting" things now, e.g. through executive orders.
asdff 2mo ago
The issue is deciding importance and most people are too stupid to understand nth order effects. So that will turn into the usual pitchforks.
- tremon 2mo ago
  People don't pick up pitchforks because they don't understand something; people pick up pitchforks because they're told to pick them up. The issue is bad-faith reporting like what happened with Mamdani and the NYC enclave map, not government transparency.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    >The issue is bad-faith reporting like what happened with Mamdani and the NYC enclave map, not government transparency. What was bad faith about it? As someone who literally only heard of this drama because of this comment, so far as I can tell the controversy is that they omitted some white immigrant neighborhoods (eg. little italy), and Mamdani backtracked on it?
j2kun 2mo ago
People do this all the time https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1iu44ub/updated_interactive_us_federal_government/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1iu44ub/up... https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://sankeymatic.com/gallery/federal-budget.html https://sankeymatic.com/gallery/federal-budget.html
- j2kun 2mo ago
  There is also Michael Lewis's book "Who Is Government?" if you want more meaningful stories.
- estearum 2mo ago
  Also: https://sam.gov/ https://sam.gov/
felixgallo 2mo ago
Do you mean something like the longstanding Government Accountability Office, which was formed by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921?
- estearum 2mo ago
  no no, they mean some other thing, which is different in totally unexplainable ways and – most importantly – doesn't make one feel stupid for not knowing it existed
kristjansson 2mo ago
> massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes. That existed! The links the various DOGE apparatchik kept posting as 'evidence' were from publicly available databases of spending, contracts, etc. The 'receipts' site was just a poor, partially-understood scrape of that data!
yardie 2mo ago
We already have that in the GAO. We also have personnel who's job is to root out fraud: inspector generals. The budget is constantly audited scrutinized for excess and waste, except 2 departments: defense and Medicare. The former is pork for the politicians' home states. The later is so complex it relies on the healthcare industry to help write the rules. And they can't help making sure they get paid the most.
- jimt1234 2mo ago
  Yes, the GAO exists. But under the current administration, it's basically like a security guard that just sits there and watches crooks do bad shit, reports it, and then nothing happens.
  - Rapzid 2mo ago
    It's more like they fired the security guard and never bothered to hire a new one. Aren't most of the inspectors general positions they fired still vacant?
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2mo ago
    And the Trump administration would similarly hamstring any newly created transparency organization. Not that the current congress would ever pass such a thing. And anyway, the Supreme Court has made sure that even if congress passed a law to make a(nother) government transparency agency, they can't make that agency truly independent and protected from presidential interference.
    - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
      Creating an executive agency to investigate the executive would be pretty stupid. It'll likely lead to "we've investigated ourselves and found nothing", even if the president wasn't vested in all executive power, as the executive branch consolidates. However, creating an agency in the legislative branch is another story. One of the duties of the legistive is to investigate the executive, is it not? (not that this matters when both the executive and legislative are controlled by the same party)
estearum 2mo ago
www.sam.gov knock yourself out
ThinkingGuy 2mo ago
You might be interested in this: "So you want to reform democracy" - Joshua Tauberer https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597 https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-...
dgellow 2mo ago
The general public has no idea how to evaluate government spending, and because of this people are incredibly susceptible to being manipulated and lied to. That’s what we’ve seen with DOGE, people who have no idea how scientific research work cancelling funding based on vibes. It turns out the shrimp treadmills that do sound ridiculous at first glance are in fact made for a very good reason
butlike 2mo ago
To what end? Won't a dataset with no actionable items just be a sensationalist headline generator? What if someone did find something funny with the money? What's the process for acting on it? Do they go to the press? What about all the false positive of people who interpret the data incorrectly, then fire off (essentially spam) to the news outlets? I'm struggling to see an upside to that one (but I'd like to).

by bs7280 2mo ago

Ferret7446 2mo ago

This was discussed pretty widely back when this all started. Creating a new department has a ton of overhead (government inefficiency) so they wanted to sidestep the process. The common narrative is that Trump didn't get anything done in his first term because he was hamstrung by all of the bureaucracy, hence why he is aggressively "shortcircuiting" things now, e.g. through executive orders.

asdff 2mo ago

The issue is deciding importance and most people are too stupid to understand nth order effects. So that will turn into the usual pitchforks.

tremon 2mo ago
People don't pick up pitchforks because they don't understand something; people pick up pitchforks because they're told to pick them up. The issue is bad-faith reporting like what happened with Mamdani and the NYC enclave map, not government transparency.
- gruez 2mo ago
  >The issue is bad-faith reporting like what happened with Mamdani and the NYC enclave map, not government transparency. What was bad faith about it? As someone who literally only heard of this drama because of this comment, so far as I can tell the controversy is that they omitted some white immigrant neighborhoods (eg. little italy), and Mamdani backtracked on it?

j2kun 2mo ago

People do this all the time https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1iu44ub/updated_interactive_us_federal_government/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1iu44ub/up... https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://sankeymatic.com/gallery/federal-budget.html https://sankeymatic.com/gallery/federal-budget.html

j2kun 2mo ago
There is also Michael Lewis's book "Who Is Government?" if you want more meaningful stories.
estearum 2mo ago
Also: https://sam.gov/ https://sam.gov/

felixgallo 2mo ago

Do you mean something like the longstanding Government Accountability Office, which was formed by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921?

estearum 2mo ago
no no, they mean some other thing, which is different in totally unexplainable ways and – most importantly – doesn't make one feel stupid for not knowing it existed

kristjansson 2mo ago

> massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes. That existed! The links the various DOGE apparatchik kept posting as 'evidence' were from publicly available databases of spending, contracts, etc. The 'receipts' site was just a poor, partially-understood scrape of that data!

yardie 2mo ago

We already have that in the GAO. We also have personnel who's job is to root out fraud: inspector generals. The budget is constantly audited scrutinized for excess and waste, except 2 departments: defense and Medicare. The former is pork for the politicians' home states. The later is so complex it relies on the healthcare industry to help write the rules. And they can't help making sure they get paid the most.

jimt1234 2mo ago
Yes, the GAO exists. But under the current administration, it's basically like a security guard that just sits there and watches crooks do bad shit, reports it, and then nothing happens.
- Rapzid 2mo ago
  It's more like they fired the security guard and never bothered to hire a new one. Aren't most of the inspectors general positions they fired still vacant?
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2mo ago
  And the Trump administration would similarly hamstring any newly created transparency organization. Not that the current congress would ever pass such a thing. And anyway, the Supreme Court has made sure that even if congress passed a law to make a(nother) government transparency agency, they can't make that agency truly independent and protected from presidential interference.
  - bit-anarchist 2mo ago
    Creating an executive agency to investigate the executive would be pretty stupid. It'll likely lead to "we've investigated ourselves and found nothing", even if the president wasn't vested in all executive power, as the executive branch consolidates. However, creating an agency in the legislative branch is another story. One of the duties of the legistive is to investigate the executive, is it not? (not that this matters when both the executive and legislative are controlled by the same party)

estearum 2mo ago

www.sam.gov knock yourself out

ThinkingGuy 2mo ago

You might be interested in this: "So you want to reform democracy" - Joshua Tauberer https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597 https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-...

dgellow 2mo ago

The general public has no idea how to evaluate government spending, and because of this people are incredibly susceptible to being manipulated and lied to. That’s what we’ve seen with DOGE, people who have no idea how scientific research work cancelling funding based on vibes. It turns out the shrimp treadmills that do sound ridiculous at first glance are in fact made for a very good reason

butlike 2mo ago

To what end? Won't a dataset with no actionable items just be a sensationalist headline generator? What if someone did find something funny with the money? What's the process for acting on it? Do they go to the press? What about all the false positive of people who interpret the data incorrectly, then fire off (essentially spam) to the news outlets? I'm struggling to see an upside to that one (but I'd like to).