Information accessibility

Posted on | January 28, 2009 | No Comments

As presented by the brilliant Journalism 2.0-blog, the Obama administration has once again emphasized its principle of information accessibility by opening up another previously closed-off branch of US government. This time by launching USAspending.gov, a site devoted to letting “Americans see where their money goes” and putting the spotlight on the new federal budget. The most significant thing about the site, however, beside its user-friendly customer-facing interface, is the open access to its data that is available through the API it offers.

The Journalism 2.0-blog writes: “The API will allow web developers at news organizations or independent journalism startups to mix and mash all that data, with other information sources, according to their own specific focus. That means new Web pages and database subsets built by industry, geography, voting trends or any other slice of interest. It’s info porn that’s customizable.”

Read more at On The Media.

If you’re interested in the dynamics and dialectics of media, I suggest you subscribe to Journalism 2.0.

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