June 27th, 2010 | by Derek Willis | published in Data, Fed Data
From the perspective of someone who uses government data pretty often, Data.gov and its state progeny (Massachusetts, D.C., Minnesota – the “data deli” is a great name – among them) are better than what we used to have. They make the acquisition of data by journalists, regulated communities and the general public much easier than [...]
October 28th, 2009 | by Derek Willis | published in Campaign Finance, Fed Data
The good folks at the Federal Election Commission launched a disclosure data catalog recently, continuing the federal government data catalog trend. And while there are few (if any) people better at explaining campaign finance data than the FEC’s Bob Biersack, the data catalog is a work in progress and has room for improvement. It should [...]
March 25th, 2009 | by Derek Willis | published in Fed Data, FOIA
When it first appeared I was really excited to see Show Us The Data, which gave visitors a chance to list and vote for their “Most Requested Documents” that should be more readily available from the federal government. Sure enough, there were plenty of strong choices for the top 10 list. And then people starting [...]
November 5th, 2006 | by Derek Willis | published in Fed Data
Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette, who pretty much owns the mine safety beat, has a story showing that “mine disasters like Sago get headlines. But far more coal miners die … alone, crushed by heavy equipment, ground up by runaway machinery, buried beneath collapsed mine roofs … Only 13 percent of the more [...]
October 12th, 2006 | by Derek Willis | published in Fed Data
Farah Stockman, Michael Kranish, Peter S. Canellos and Kevin Baron of the Boston Globe have a four-part series on foreign aid spending by the United States, finding that “President Bush has almost doubled the percentage of US foreign-aid dollars going to faith-based groups such as Food for the Hungry, according to a Globe survey of [...]