Usefulness
Considering the tools outlined in the Technologies to Tame the Budget white-paper, and being defined in more detail on the wiki.illuminatedbudget.com website, several questions leap to mind.
Can they be built? Will these tools be useful? Why would anyone want to use them?
First the easy answer: yes, they can be built, and without needing to find software super-geniuses. All of the technologies in these tools, all of the user interfaces and visualization capabilities they will implement, have been done before. The "new" aspect of this project is in how these features and technologies are assembled and applied, not in the features themselves.
Will these tools be useful? Absolutely. Every problem space, every type of data, has a method of interaction that is natural for it. Using the right tool for a problem makes it easy, and using the wrong tool makes it hard. We are creating the right tools for this problem space, to highlight aspects of this data that we believe are important. As part of our solution, we are creating a platform that other organizations can use to highlight the aspects that they think are important.
Will people use these tools? We think so...
Open Philosophy
Our tool-set is being created with open-source principles so that not only the US Federal Budget data is being opened up to the world, but the tools themselves will be released to everyone. Any organization would be free to modify and adjust these tools for their own special needs and to apply them to their own particular interests.
Community Access
Software tools already exist to organize and manage the Federal Budget and legislation information, though they may do this less elegantly than what we propose. Some organizations pay a lot of money for access to these tools. Our tools will give these same capabilities, and more, to small organizations, to individuals, to everyone. We are giving power to the broader community.
Connections
As individuals use our tools to research and comment on the Budget, they will find other people with similar interests, and they will start working together. As existing organizations use these tools, they will find they have common ground with other organizations. The very act of using these tools will highlight the connections and common interests between people and organizations; communities will form and grow, and these communities will amplify the efforts of their members.
Identity Consolidation
People have identities on many systems these days, whether it is a simple login or an intricate node in a social network. By using our tools, they can begin to consolidate their federation of existing identities and friends, providing easier access to, and a consolidated view of, their presence in the online world.
Reputation
The reputation that people accumulate based on their actions on this system, and imported from their identities on other systems, gives them an incentive to be active and to be mindful of how their activity affects their reputation. This reputation has visibility in a large, and socially meaningful, community and this in turn gives them reason to treat it with care.
As a footnote, during the development of these white-papers, there were times when this tool-set could have been used. For example, the consensus interface, and the commentary system will in fact be used to manage user feedback about the tools, once developed. We are writing these tools, in part, because we want to use them ourselves. The only surprising thing is that someone hasn’t created them already. Someone has to be first, and it seems that this "someone" could be us.
