what i did on my 2nd furlough day
yesterday was my 2nd furlough day in the 2013 government shutdown. three small things happened to me personally yesterday that make me stop and think about the importance of government services. in particular government electronic services and open data drive a significant portion of the american economy. without these services, that is without government investment in open data and electronic services, some portion of the economy would be significantly more costly to implement and even not able to function because it would be too expensive. these stories points to the importance of government open data, and how commerce is actually stifled because of the shutdown.
while home, i received an email from @benbalter which asked if i knew of an open dataset which linked 113th congressional boundaries to ZIP Codes. he asked this question because a) someone asked him and b) the federal government shutdown has also shut down all of the government open data download sites (well almost all government web sites). so i took it upon myself to create one. the results of this analysis are here and were remarkably easy to create. this cost $0 in software, $0 processing, $0 in data hosting and took less than 1 hour to create (writing the readme actually took the longest).
i also received an email from my brother-in-law showing his support for the shutdown. in it, he made this statement “The IRS shut down their tax verification services -so lots of loans that need to fund are on hold”. Now i have not verified this, but if true, a subsequent result of the shutdown is a hold on a significant US commerce sector, home loans.
finally, at the end of the day, i received this tweet asking if i knew a replacement API for the US Census Block lookup API we developed. the twitter conversation ends in an example site that uses his API, yet another example of how open data drives US commerce.
these three examples, all in one day time span, made me realize what a tremendous investment the government has in everyday life. these investments are persistent, pervasive and have a significant positive impact on the US economy. in example one above, knowing that there is a relationship, a geospatial relationship, between congressional representation, and a surrogate for where people are (e.g. ZIP Codes), means that individuals in sectors like direct marketing (wikipedia suggests that in 2010 ~$153 billion was spent on direct marketing in the US) can actually perform its most basic task; which people are in specific places that i want to reach out to. i have no idea really what this particular task i helped support, but i do know that government created the congressional district geography and the postal geography. without these basic units and the opportunity to use this as open data, this industry would have to invest significant money to make its roi, and perhaps would never indeed have a business opportunity because of the cost to perform one aspect of its market (determining basic geography).
again, i have no experience in the home loan sector, and no experience in the tax verification service my brother-in-law talks about, but a quick search illustrates that perhaps this is a trillion dollar a year market and indeed forbes is reporting how this could hurt the US economy significantly.
finally, my colleagues in the bay area have created this great site. its search utility uses a geographic search utility created by my office in the federal government and meant to be a free open utility for allowing the exact use case they have implemented; open data to spur innovation and economic value. lacking the API implemented, their site needs to have some other investment to make their own ROI work. work they had not expected.
we all rely on the federal government for all kinds of services every day. shutting it down hampers economic development, particularly because open data and electronic services which can only really be developed by the government mean investment in other sectors end up failing.
September 24, 2019
in reflecting, no single thing could possibly capture what i felt in '89 or after this weekend, but for me i gathered a handful of themes.
September 24, 2019
government is the best place to work. the people are amazing and i have never met any their equal. i am proud to have had a service career.
October 02, 2018
government is the best place to work. the people are amazing and i have never met any their equal. i am proud to have had a service career.
March 24, 2018
Changing the federal acquisition regulation would require an inordinately large shift, likely an Administrative Procedures Act rulemaking or perhaps even legislation, both of which are very unlikely scenarios.
December 04, 2017
i hope that there is a slim chance my children can experience some mountains or canyons, without handrails.
May 11, 2016
these charts help illustrate the mortgage landscape
February 18, 2016
tonight i have remembered the night it shook my bones. i just wanted to write about it for its own sake.
April 15, 2015
it is the opportunity to reflect that everyday activities are the most important thing. it is a milestone that the kid got back to the court from the darkeset depths of therapy, of surgery and of unknown and fear.
February 26, 2015
be very careful of any IT bandwagon, because in reality, it might be a fake band
November 01, 2014
i am so amazed by my uncle. my uncle paul, a stalwart in boulder colorado, has recently had a rebirth of music.
July 29, 2014
it gave me chills because i could hear the dedication in the voice of antero garcia, the teacher, when he asks "how could i have reached out to you better?"
July 12, 2014
I owned and road my first fixed gear bike in the winter of 1985. I was a member of my high school cycling team back then in Fall River (pronounced fall reeva) Ma. Winter's in south eastern new england are a little harsh, there is a good mix of snow, freezing rain storms, north-easters coming in off the atlantic which make for extra salt corrosion see rusty jones.
July 08, 2014
This is an ignite talk i gave at a staff event about american cycling and innovation.
May 24, 2014
Writing out the names of the people who made the success at the fcc. what they did. the real rock stars
November 09, 2013
its been eating at me. the constant tech news. the constant headlines about failed government IT contracting.
October 07, 2013
good design integrates multiple technologies, and highlights the issue, rather than the implementing technology.
October 03, 2013
The antideficiency act is the law currently being invoked for having government employees not work.
October 01, 2013
yesterday was my first day of furlough in the 2013 government shutdown. during the day i did the following things
June 15, 2013
Why the recent GitHub release making geojson files automatic web maps is disruptive.
April 12, 2013
Recently at the FCC, we held an unusual day. We call it D(f)evEx (pronounced as either devex or fedex) Days, and this was our first ever.
March 22, 2013
Working on a previous conclusion that perhaps PDFs are not a great way to release data.
March 05, 2013
On Sunday, February 25, 2013, the White House released documents detailing the projected costs to states of the upcoming sequester.