At yesterday’s press conference describing the administration’s new “financial stability plan” for the banking system, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner offered what seems to be the obligatory new Web site for any Obama administration proposal:
Our work begins with a new framework of oversight and governance of all aspects of our Financial Stability Plan.
The American people will be able to see where their tax dollars are going and the return on their government’s investment, they will be able to see whether the conditions placed on banks and institutions are being met and enforced, they will be able to see whether boards of directors are being responsible with taxpayer dollars and how they’re compensating their executives, and they will be able to see how these actions are impacting the overall flow of lending and the cost of borrowing.
These new requirements, which will be available on a new website FinancialStability.gov, will give the American people the transparency they deserve.
(Clicking over there a few minutes ago, I found a text-only “coming soon” page, with links to Geithner’s remarks. In a way, the page echoes the lack of detail critics observed in the speech itself.) FinancialStability.gov thus joins Recovery.gov, the designated future source of stimulus bill spending, and Astrongmiddleclass.gov, a site that’s meant to provide info on the Vice President’s middle class task force. The former sits idle, awaiting instructions that will presumably come with the passage of the bill. The latter redirects to a section of the White House Web site, and contains the same Obama-esque design. All this Web building, but to what end?
In general, developing sites around specific (and pressing) issues to keep the public informed strikes me as a good idea. But if some or many of these proposals are simply going to sit on Whitehouse.gov, with the same 500-character comment box, it’s going to be hard to keep declaring each of them as an exercise in some kind of extreme transparency.
Clint Hendler at the Columbia Journalism Review notes Obama’s view of Recovery.gov, as outlined in his recent Indiana town hall meeting:
“We’re actually going to set up something called Recovery.gov—this is going to be a special website we set up, that gives you a report on where the money is going in your community, how it’s being spent, how many jobs it’s being created so that all of you can be the eyes and ears. And if you see that a project is not working the way it’s supposed to, you’ll be able to get on that website and say, ‘You know, I thought this was supposed to be going to school construction but I haven’t noticed any changes being made.’ And that will help us track how this money is being spent. …The key is that we’re going to have strong oversight and strong transparency to make sure this money isn’t being wasted.”
I don’t agree with Hendler that’s Obama offers “far more detail” than the version of the Recovery.gov mentioned in the bills themselves. (The House bill has arguably more specificity on exactly the points Obama highlights: where the money is being spent and how many jobs are created.) But I do agree that the big question will be to what extent, and in what format, the actual data will be released, providing the basis for a more legitimate type of transparency — the kind where outside entities can parse the numbers themselves.
One reassuring development: TechPresident relays that Bev Godwin of the General Services Administration and USA.gov — whom I reported about in my recent Wired piece — is detailing to the White House new media team.
Posted at 3:23 pm | Filed under Politics, Technology, Wired |
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[...] New administration Web sites appear to be “shovel ready.” [...]
Recovery.gov: transparency and its complications…
Yesterday, President Obama signed the $800 billion economic stimulus bill, and as announced a couple weeks ago in his YouTube address, his web team has created Recovery.gov to allow people to track where the money goes. Some observations: There isn’t….
[...] I could see them also launching sites for health reform, for energy policy, etc., along with the already-announced FinancialStability.gov (and AStrongMiddleClass.gov, but that redirects to the main White House [...]