Can a person have fun with the federal budget?
If you can, this is probably as close to it as it gets. Seattle-based open data startup Socrata has taken the U.S. government’s federal budget for 2016 and loaded it into an “interactive experience” called the Open Budget application. The app allows users to “drill-down and explore the White House Administration’s priorities and initiatives,” the company says.
Why? The $4 trillion budget can be confusing to the everyday person. Socrata hopes the application will bring more transparency to exactly what the Feds are doing with your tax dollars. It can also help businesses and other organizations, when working with the federal government, understand what’s going on with the federal budget, so “consultants can become better-informed partners to governments in developing and implementing smart and data-driven government policies.”
If nothing else, it’s a fascinating look at how we spend our collective cash. For instance, in 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services tops the budget with $1.09 trillion, with Social Security next at $1.01 trillion. The Department of Defense comes in No. 3 with $586.5 billion budgeted, and the Department of the Treasury at $580.4 billion.
Clicking on any area of interest will give you a drilled-down version of spending in that department. For example, here’s the Department of Education:
Now, who’s ready to dive into their taxes?
