The Bureau of the Fiscal Service on Thursday unveiled the new Data Lab, part of the relaunch of USAspending.gov, a key part of the government’s congressionally mandated transparency efforts.
It can be hard to wrap your head around $500 billion in contract spending across 2,000 accounts, but that was the charge given to the bureau: find a way to make the U.S. government’s spending data accessible and understandable. The new site launches with six interactive data visualizations that break down the government’s annual spending by agency, office, contractor and more.
“We enable users to quickly consume the data for decision making and ultimately to help promote a better government,” Renata Maziarz, director for data transparency and product owner on the Data Lab, told Nextgov ahead of the launch.
While the DATA Act—legislation passed in 2014 requiring the federal government to be more transparent about spending—does not require the Fiscal Service to create visualization tools, the project fits perfectly with the motto of the bureau’s Data Transparency Office: better data, better decisions, better government. Read more…