Open-government advocates Tuesday gave the media a sneak peek at what they’re hoping is the vanguard of an information revolution: an online database of government spending.
The database, www.fedspending.org, will launch officially next week.
But organizers of the site gave a demonstration to members of the media.
The Web site contains information from millions of government grants and contracts. It also includes money spent on insurance and loans.
Citizens will be able to search individual companies or agencies — even individual Congressional districts — to see where their money is going.
The Web site debuts a full two years before the government will be required to come up with its own online database, under a “Google your government” law signed by President Bush last week.
“I really hope it becomes a prototype,” said Gary Bass, leader of the nonprofit group OMB Watch, which put the database together.
The site is still raw, and the scope of the data is so large that it can take several minutes to complete a search. But Bass said the object was “not to put the bells and whistles on — it was to get the information out to the public.”
The Web site was paid for with a $200,000 grant from the Sunlight Foundation, a D.C. nonprofit that gives money to open-government groups.
