Big news for all you Edward Tufte fanboys and girls. He will be joining the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel who will advise The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. The Board’s purpose is to track and explain how the $787 billion in stimulus funds is being put to use.
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.
Whether Tufte will have a direct impact on graphs like these, I’m not so sure, but it certainly won’t hurt. I mean the man does know a thing or two about dispersing information.
[Thanks, Yuri and @tbeauchamp]
This is great news, and Tufte appears primed for the occasion!
Given what we already do know about how/what/when the funds are being used, I’m surprised they’d hire someone to make that knowledge more accessible.
No administration is interested in truth, only in making the most easily digestable propoganda.
Just when I’m beginning to forget how delightfully geeky the Obama administration is, they pull this one out of the bag.
Is it too much to ask now that Richard Dawkins address Congress on school education?
Nathan,
The way that Tufte’s involvement with Recovery.gov is being reported is a bit misleading. This is old news. Tufte, Ben Shneiderman, and others have been serving on the advisory panel for quite awhile now. Nevertheless, it is indeed encouraging that experts have been brought in to assist the government in this effort. Of even greater encouragement, however, will be the implementation of their recommendations in the form of especially effective data displays and the influence of their recommendations spread across many more of the government’s websites.