Spending cuts to turn lights off?

I don't get it.

After watching this video during Sunshine week, the value of E-Gov spending should be obvious. Yet, HR1 cuts funding to these projects to the point where the IT Dashboard, Data.gov, paymentaccuracy.gov, USAspending.gov, and Apps.gov all face shutdown in the next few months. If you haven't ever looked at or used any of these sites, or didn't know they existed, take a few minutes and check them out. Do they seem to be valuable tools for informing citizens of government activity and spending?

So what do we do? Some folks, including Tim Berners-Lee, have encouraged people to sign petitions like this one from Sunlight Foundation. Others remind us that the dotcom bust gave way to Web 2.0, so maybe this would give rise to something better on the post Gov 2.0 side of things. However, I think the biggest casualty of this is, and will be, the lack of our elected officials placing value on open government. Having buy in for transparency and open gov from government workers and officials is key to the success of opening data at any level of government. If the benefits of doing this are not valued by those we elect and employ, then we should not expect much transparency. If these federal government sites fall, then we no longer have them to reference, not just for the value they provide, but as an example of open government in action.

So when I read statements from our congressional reps about reducing spending, cutting government waste, and keeping government on the straight and narrow, I don't think that discarding tools that allow us to monitor (some of) their efforts is a good idea.