Illuminated Budget
From Illuminated Budget Wiki
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The Illuminated Budget (IB) is a project of the The League of Technical Voters. The goal of the IB project is to increase the transparency and accountability of the political process. The IB will consist of a community-built legislation database, an intuitive web-based User Interface, and a social network to tie each database contribution to the author's identity and reputation.
We intend for this project to have a substantial, positive impact on this country, and this means knocking down as many barriers to participation as possible. To this end, a key proposal of ours is to create a social networking open standard, allowing users of existing social networking sites to participate in the IB social network and community using their existing identities.
[edit] Project Overview and Objectives
[edit] Statement of the Problem
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to track federal spending. Information is either not available or it is so buried that even full time professionals have a difficult time finding what they need. The current process of finding information is extremely daunting, even to the professional.
[edit] Goal
We want to make the federal budget accessible, so that American citizens can gather all of the necessary information needed to determine how much money was spent, how it was determined such funds would be spent, and who was involved in these determinations in any particular area or field.
[edit] Vision
The ability for anyone to track federal spending would lead to reduction in waste, reduction in misdirection of funds, and improved use of taxes.
[edit] How We Will Do This
- Develop a plan detailing the resources and tasks necessary to implement the project.
- Find and coordinate diverse individuals such as legislators, journalists, politicians, computer technologists, business owners, academicians, scientists, students, social activists, etc.
- Bring together the concerned individuals who are willing to commit to the project.
- Implement the plan.
[edit] The "Project" Consists of
- A suite of online tools.
- These online tools will be:
- Implemented to a high standard.
- Easy to use, providing accurate data, and with high-quality search capabilities.
- Able to gather information from multiple and varied sources such as:
- Annotated, referenced, cited, and statistically analyzed data.
- Personal and anecdotal opinions, used to consolidate and drive a public consensus.
- Provided freely to the public, for use by anyone. Custom applications could be developed commercially, to support and sustain our public work.
[edit] First steps
- Start with one specific tool to give an early success. This can convince stakeholders of the feasibility of the project as a whole.
- Tackle a second, harder tool. If successful, this can convince even the skeptics to support the project.
[edit] Potential Uses
Concerned groups could track funding in education, agriculture, medical spending, research, military spending, etc. The tool set could be applied to any other form of complex, embedded data besides the federal budget, including legislation, law, patents, and so forth.
[edit] Potential Outcomes
A more efficient and effective government process.
[edit] League of Technical Voters
The League of Technical Voters is a 501(c)(3) that is building a consortium of organizations, businesses, government officials, lobbyists, journalists, data brokers, and most importantly, individuals that believe in transparent government and the ability of communities to produce superior content. We are a non-partisan organization which anyone can join. Our current focus is to build a Illuminated Federal Budget as a means of furthering our values.
[edit] What to do next...
Read about the proposed Technology
Learn about our motivations from the Use Cases
Sign our Petition
Go to our Events
Joint the Mailing List
