The Obama Administration is learning the pitfalls of naive IT enthusiasm--the idea we can improve government with a little innovation. First there was their soliciting of ideas from the public for improving government, a process which seems to have fizzled out, partially under the impact of the birthers take-over, partially through not thinking through the process.
Now there's the transparency promise of data on jobs saved and created through the stimulus. They've had hiccups, the most recent one being ABC's noting that the jobs data is ascribed to non-existent Congressional districts. That reflects a common problem in new systems, a failure to validate input. Meaning, in the old phrase, "garbage in, garbage out". (I haven't seen that used much recently--not sure why.) Ideally for each data element input you have some validations, like a table of valid congressional district numbers, or a reasonableness check, like matching dollars and numbers of jobs.
Whippersnappers like the IT guys in the administration have to learn, just like I did.
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