TRC

For those interested in the visual display of information Edward Tufte is no stranger. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics and Computer Science at Yale, but his claim to fame is expertise in displaying information. A quick visit to his website will show you the scope of his work and suffice to say he is a renowned expert. Now he is getting in the act to help the government.

When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known commonly as the Stimulus Bill) was passed, one of the objectives was to make the disbursement of money as transparent as possible. So a website called Recovery.gov was set up but the government just didn’t seem to be able to make it easy to use. That’s where Tufte (popularly known as ET) came in. He was recruited by the government expressly for his skill in visual display and you can already see the difference in the website.         

Information is easily available and the new site user friendly and pleasing to the eye. You can scroll over the U.S. map and quickly see the money being used by different states. One of his suggestions was a way to input your zip code and be able to clearly see the stimulus money at work. Here is the example for 19034. Another suggestion was a time chart that shows how various projects were started in different parts of the country at different time periods.  

Good graphical work is not being done in the U.S. alone. Here is a nice chart of how the British government spends its budget.