March 10, 2009
VirginniaStimulus.org – the first in the nation website to enable accountability and transparency on how a state manages economic stimulus spending -- was officially launched by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Virginia was the first state to collect proposals from the public about how to spend federal stimulus dollars via “Stimulus.Virginia.Gov.” Governor Tim Kaine announced last month the site would “give everyone in the Commonwealth a forum to submit and exchange project ideas. More than 7,000 proposals were submitted on the site. The state will now evaluate how to spend the federal economic stimulus dollars, including resident input.
VirginiaStimulus.org is an independent website that uses technology to elicit knowledge about projects and opportunities from the people who know the most about them. The site uses crowdsourcing to learn about what taxpayers and the people affected think about potential projects.
VirginiaStimulus.org can help the leaders of Virginia, as well as researchers and citizens alike, better understand how federal stimulus funds might be spent and to hold public officials accountable for their spending decisions.
“Mercatus is seizing the opportunity to gather information and make it available to other researchers as well as stakeholders so that we can better understand what the stimulus means in practice,” said Jerry Brito, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and creator of the site.
VirginiaStimulus.org applies the ideas developed at the Mercatus Center about how transparency can improve public policy decisions.
Virginians submitted their ideas for how Virginia should spend federal stimulus money and the Commonwealth of Virginia made this information available to the public. This creates useful data to be used by researchers and others concerned with the accountability of public officials. VirginiaStimulus.org was built by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to take this data and apply innovative ideas developed at Mercatus about how Web 2.0 technology and transparency in government can help improve public policy decisions.
This site was inspired by a similar project, StimulusWatch.org, which was started independently by Mercatus Senior Research Fellows Brito and Eileen Norcross.
Brito’s research has focused on government transparency and accountability, specifically how the internet can be harnessed to crowdsource the task of keeping officials accountable. Norcross’ research has focused on state and local budgets, economic development, and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. For more information, you can read her paper, "The Community Development Block Grant: Does it Work?"
Contact: Catherine Behan
Communications Manager
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
(703)993-4960 (office)
(203)207-1897 (mobile)
