USASpending.gov “almost entirely useless”

The Sunlight Foundation called out federal agencies at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC today. USASpending.gov “almost entirely useless,” said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation.

The organization has launched its own website, Clearspending.com, which has found that roughly half, or $1.4 trillion, in spending has misreported on government websites.

Miller did not stop at USASpending.gov, but also criticized Data.gov and Recovery.gov for equally bad reporting.

Which begs the question, how can we guarantee the government will report accurately? What checks and balances can be put in place to keep government reporting honest? We’ll see what the summit decides, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on the subject.

Federal government website satisfaction up with transparency

A new poll revealed there is a correlation between satisfied constituents and government websites: transparency. According to NextGov:

For the last quarter of 2009, more than 250,000 citizens surveyed gave federal Web sites a satisfaction rating of 75.2 out of 100 points, according to a report released by ForeSee Results… Survey respondents also awarded federal Web sites a satisfaction rating of 75.2 for the third quarter of 2009.

What is the real shocker is that many of them exceed satisfaction found in many private sector sites, even Google or Amazon.

The three top-rated federal Web sites meet or exceed the private sector’s highest score of 88 points earned by Newegg.com, an online computer hardware and software retailer, and 28 of 103 federal sites measured earned average satisfaction scores of 80 or higher.

I think we could expect this constituent satisfaction to jump leaps and bounds if local government entities started engaging in transparency too.