Death and Taxes
Death and Taxes - A Graphical Visualization of the Federal Budget Death and Taxes is a large representational graph and poster of the federal budget. It contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually. The data is straight from the president's 2009 budget request and will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress to begin the fiscal year. All of the item circles are proportional in size to their spending totals and the percentage change from 2008 is included to spot trends and disproportion. Continue reading
How Congress Uses Twitter (Research Preview)
[UPDATE 7/12/10: I updated the link to the paper from Justin's site to the umd site where the paper was officially published. jrj] I thought I would give the readers of FGI the first scoop on some early research that is coming out of the University of Maryland on how members of Congress are using Twitter. Twitter Use by the U.S. Congress (currently under review) Abstract: Twitter is a microblogging service boasting over 7 million members and growing at a tremendous rate. With the buzz surrounding the service have come claims of its ability to transform the way people interact and share information, and calls for public figures to start using the site. In this study, we examine the way Twitter is being used by legislators, particularly by members of the United States Congress. We read and coded over 4,500 posts from all members of Congress using the site. Our analysis shows that Congresspeople are primarily using Twitter to post information, particularly links to news articles about them and their blog posts, and to report on their simple activities. These tend not to provide new insights into government or the legislative process or to improve transparency; rather, they are vehicles for self-promotion. However, Twitter is also facilitating direct communication between Congresspeople and citizens, though this is a less popular activity. In this paper, we report on our results, analysis, and provide suggestions for how Twitter can be used by Congresspeople in ways that benefit the citizens, not just the PR machines of the legislators themselves. From the results of this study we found that Twitter is being used effectively in some spaces and not as effectively in others. In particular, Twitter has created opportunities for increased communication between citizens and Congresspeople, but the majority of posts contained information or location and activities which were being used for outreach and self promotion rather than to provide information that is helpful to citizens. * Note this paper has been submitted for an upcoming conference but has NOT been accepted, peer-reviewed, or published. Please DO NOT CITE this article but if you are interested feel free to contact me. Continue reading
A Quick Visualization Primer for Data.gov
This month, the Federal Government finally released their much anticipated data.gov website. The purpose of data.gov is to increase public access to machine readable data sets that are generated by the Federal Government. Now that site has gone live, it is time for all of us to start digging into the data. Provided below is a collection of references and resources to serve as a short visualization primer for those interested in exploring the data sets that have been made available. Resources:
- Chart Suggestions - A Thought Start - A basic flow chart like introduction on how to represent data visually.
- Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design - a very small booklet that teaches the principles and techniques of information design
- Periodic Table of Visualization Methods - A collection of visualization methods
- Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization - A history of visualization
- Online Library of Information Visualization Environments - library of visualization environments
- Tufte Design Principles
- Flowing Data
- Information Aesthetics
- EagerEyes
- Visual Complexity
- Data Visualization
- Information Design
- Many Eyes - the YouTube of visualizations
- Juice Analytics - Chart Chooser
- DabbleDB - power data manipulation tool
- R - open source free statistical computing software environment
- Tableau - commercial visualization software
- Wordle - creates word clouds
- Tufte, E., (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
- Tufte, E., (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
- Tufte, E., (1997). Visual Explanations. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
- Tufte, E., (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
- Visocky, J., & O'grady, K. (2008). The Information Design Handbook. City: How.
- Jacobson, R., (1999). Information Design. Cambridge: MIT Press.
- Few, S., (2004). Show Me the Numbers. City: Analytics Press.
- Ware, C., (2000). Information Visualization. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.
- Card, S., Shneiderman, B., & Mackinlay, J. (1999). Readings in Information Visualization. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Guide of the Week: North Korea
With North Korea once again pushing its way to the front of the headlines, this is a good time to show off a librarian produced resource guide from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki on this pariah nation: North Korea Country Guide (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008) Like the other excellent country guides produced by the UCB govpubs library, this guide is broken into the following sections:
- Government Information
- Country Profiles
- Articles & Databases
- Diplomatic Relations
- Health
- Peacekeeping & Military Information
- Resources in the Catalog
- Related Topics
No visit to the agency would be complete without a trip to the [REDACTED] reports that between 9:30 and 10:55pm, guests spent 2/3 of an average day's sales, carting away cart-loads of t-shirts, caps, and infants/children's outfits.The secret's out. The CIA has a gift shop. The redaction would look somewhat less silly and pointless if they had just redacted the gift shop manager's name. But I digress. The good librarians at the University of Colorado at Boulder have provided a wealth of resources for anyone who wants to take a peak behind the screaming headlines of this deeply insular and often confusion producing country. Are you a librarian with a handout or guide to an issue in the news? Then link it to the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki. Continue reading
The Digital Government Society of North America
Here is an interesting organization that you might not be aware of, the Digital Government Society of North America. The Digital Government Society of America (DGSNA) is a global multi-disciplinary organization of scholars, researchers, educators, students, government professionals, and practitioners who are interested in the development and impact of digital government or e-government. DGSNA focuses on creating a support network of individuals interested in the linkages among the democratic process, government management, innovation, information, and technology. Benefits of membership include:
- Opportunity to exchange knowledge and information with other members in North America and throughout the world
- (In development) access to a membership database to find others who share your interests or have special expertise
- Discounted registration fees for our annual conference
- Subscription to a monthly e-newsletter, dgOnline
- Access to a library of over 2,000 articles and papers
- Discounted access to scholarly and professional journals