Recent Posts by dvogel
The Physics of the Corporate Universe
- Written by
- dvogel
- Date
- 11/01/2011 2:32 p.m.
Today we're launching 6° of Corporations, a new micro-site that provides some insight into the complicated area of corporate identity. It may sound trivial, but uniquely identifying a corporate entity is not easy. For federal contracting data (like in USASpending.gov), DUNS numbers are used to (supposedly) uniquely identify a contractor. However, there are problems in not only how DUNS numbers are issued and maintained, but also with the agency's use of DUNS numbers. To help illustrate this, we’ve created a visualization that shows the relationship between company names and company DUNS numbers in USASpending.gov.
Examining the USASpending Agency Submissions
- Written by
- dvogel
- Date
- 08/03/2011 11:44 a.m.
We’ve often looked at the macro perspective with this data, but what if we followed the transactions of a single program? Would we be able to understand and follow the data easily and provide citizen oversight, as was the intent of the legislation behind USASpending.gov?