Tag: government

Data visualization magnate Tufte will be part of an advisory board that oversees Recovery funds and keeps the public informed of how those funds are or aren’t being used.

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.

Good to see that the administration is putting such a high priority in ensuring that this kind of work has some real design thinking behind it.

The government has released the long-expected data.gov catalog of public datasets. Not a ton on there yet, but it’s a good place to watch and a potentially-invaluable resource in the future. I prefer Ali’s conceptual mockups to their design, but with the exception of the overuse of boldface text, it looks decent.

Now if only they’d stop with the use of the word “raw” (in quotes on the site too). It’s all over the place, visually distracting, and annoying. It’s like they wanted to be hip, but some bureaucrat decided it needed to be obviously figurative. Lame.

Hot on the heels of the inauguration and the redesign of whitehouse.gov, Ali and the Sunlight Labs team had a quick look at how they would redesign USA.gov, in a way at least significantly more useful than Andy Rutledge’s flaimbait exercise of the same kind.

There are some gaps here, but it’s a really inspiring look at what could happen with just a little bit of thought and attention to user needs and quality design.

Here’s hoping some of these ideas stick outside the White House over the next four (eight) years!