Recovery.gov shows money flowing to nonexistent districts

The best part: they spent $12,000,000 of the American taxpayers money on this web site. You think that would buy a few data validation statements. Still, it's not quite as good as GM announcing that they are paying back part of the money they got from the taxpayer....with other money they got from the taxpayer.

My guess is that most of the "stimulus" money is being spent just as well as this money.

I'm not sure about you guys, but how many ads for teeth whitening are there on this site??

http://grab.by/DQY

If you look at the data here: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/16593104/Recoverys-Phantom-Distr...

You'll also see that lots of districts are getting millions of dollars and creating ZERO jobs. Look at Ohio as an example.

I suspect the obvious explanation is: data entry error, however, any rationally developed system should have input constraints and integrity checks to prevent these kinds of errors. I would like to know what the mistake is. Is it corruption? I don't know. Probably a bit of it is, yeah.

Ouch. This is egg on face time.

Data quality is a hard job, especially when dealing with something at scale.

Let's hope that this is not used to prevent further transparency, but to spur the government into greater transparency.

It's useful to note that bogus data could be coming in from recipients who are deliberately attempting to poison the well on this issue.

More sunlight, not less.

note: kind of shocked that OR has a 00th congressional district