Where is the Money Going?

Recovery.gov has a great GIS interface to help you explore where ARRA funding is going within the US (Where is the Money Going?). You can zoom into your hometown, choose the type of funding source you want to see, and examine each individual award to see the amount, jobs created/saved, and the recipient. Here is a snapshot of my hometown with a specific award selected and stats being displayed.


Here's a view of Lafayette Parish in an aerial satellite view with the recipients of the $44M in funding that has been distributed to the parish to date.


This set of data was recently used by Sunlight Labs to feed into the iPhone Layar app to create an augmented reality application that displays recovery.gov data on your iPhone.


What an awesome example of how data standardization and transparency can combine to create new ways to view and share data. Just think of the possibilities of being able to stream environmental and public health data into applications like this in the future...the data could be sent to regulating agency staff out in the field, surveying companies, construction companies or the general public.