Change We Can Visualize

Our project will incorporate data from APIs in order to visualize the federal government’s influence and spending on projects.  This incorporates variables such as money, time, elected officials and their voting/proposals, contributions and from whom, the various projects, and how successful the projects are.  Sunlight Labs is currently running a contest that asks people to visualize at least one of their APIs in a meaningful way.  We aim incorporate at least one of these into our project.  However, this creates a constraint in our goals–we want to display data related to how the government spends its money over time.  But Sunlight Labs’ data APIs deal predominantly with congressional information.  Some APIs we are considering are:

• Sunlight API : Legislator listings and districts, Lobbyist filings
• Follow the Money : Contributions to candidates, ballot measures
• Open Secrets: More contribution data by industry
• Also: expectmore.gov, usaspending.gov,  govtrack.us

And this data can be manipulated over time.  This provides a vast spectrum of data to visualize.  We will probably have to hone our focus into one specific aspect, most likely either: legislators and their districts and donors, or more on various spending programs and their efficacy. We also need to consider which politicians to focus on (i.e., senators, house representatives). As a starting point, incorporating all of these into one visualization will make it unlikely for us to display the information in a comprehensible way.