Crowdsourcing Accountability

Soren Dayton has had a couple good posts on transparency recently, and I concur wholeheartedly that the issue is one on which Republicans should be cooperative and proactive.  They should also be insisting upon promises, metrics and accountability from the new Democratic leadership while that leadership is still in its idealist phase.  Eventually, public choice theory suggests Democrats will begin to value political protection over transparency, and the opportunity for policy progress will be lost.

So, it's important to act soon, not just in Congress, but outside, as well.  At Tech Liberation Front, Jerry Brito has an interesting idea for introducing some transparency and measurement into the proposed stimulus plan.  But it's going to take some crowdsourced help...

Last Thursday I asked for help creating a site that would facilitate crowdsourcing the task of prioritizing the 11,000+ projects proposed in the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ $73 billion “Main Street Economic Recovery” stimulus plan. The point of doing this is to help President-Elect Obama keep his promise that any stimulus spending will be directed at critical infrastructure, and not pork. Roads and bridges and schoolhouses are infrastructure, but dog parks and tennis centers in wealthy neighborhoods probably don’t count. [...]

Now that we have the data in an easy-to-remix format, I’d like to ask for your help developing the backend for the site.

Brito outlines what he has in mind, and what you can do to help the project, in his TLF post.  If you think you can help, please do so.   He's also inviting people to join the project Google Group, Crowdsourcing Accountability.

Down the road, it would also be very helpful if transparency projects like this could not only expose how money is being spent, but could also measure whether those projects and programs are meeting the goals that Congress alleges.  If a project is funded because it will create [X ]jobs, lift [Y] people out of poverty and lead to [Z] economic growth, then we should be able to measure it.   And if it doesn't meet those goals, we should be able to hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable....at least as accountable as they want to hold corporate CEO's, who aren't even spending public money.

The first step is finding out what they're doing to for us.   It's a good way for activists to get involved.  Go help Jerry Brito if you can.