Recovery Overload

Ed O'Keefe has a nice roundup of all the different recovery-related websites the government has launched or is launching, and a little bit of background on the politics behind them this morning, which got me thinking. A lot of the discussion around Obama's push towards greater openness and transparency, particularly online, has focused on the barriers to getting that done, be they regulatory or technological backwardness. But one question that doesn't always get addressed is how much information is too much. Data dumps are of course hugely useful for reporters, muckrakers, and educated amateurs who want to plow through lots of information in search of proof of wrongdoing, or simply to satisfy their own curiosity. But they're not necessarily useful, and large amounts of data, or conflicting data with equally strong pedigrees, can obfuscate an issue. In the case of the recovery websites, if the RAT board is evaluating the stimulus one way, and the White House is pushing back in multiple other ways, it may not be clear to ordinary Americans what analysis of the stimulus ought to prevail. That's a substantial problem, and not one that can be solved by rulemaking or the purchase of upgraded servers. It requires judgment, discretion, and lack of ego, not all things that are found in surplus when something as politically charged as the stimulus is up for grabs.