SANTA BARBARA, CA--(Marketwired - April 10, 2014) - Today, the Senate approved the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) -- S. 994 -- and sent the legislation back to the House, which is expected to quickly approve the measure and send it to President Obama for his signature. The DATA Act requires the federal government to transform its spending information from disconnected documents into structured, open data.
FindTheBest, a technology company focused on collecting, structuring and connecting the world's data to lead people to the best conclusions, will use this data to improve and create new consumer research applications.
Nearly 100 million people use FindTheBest to research government information each year, and will greatly benefit from the passing of the DATA Act. The site's Government Contracts topic in particular will be improved. This topic details information on how the U.S. government is spending its money, in a way that's easy for anyone to understand. The project currently uses data found on USASpending.gov, data which FindTheBest has found to be inconsistent, incorrect, and incomplete.
Because the DATA Act requires comprehensive standards, which will allow different data sets to be compared against one another, FindTheBest will be able to significantly improve the value of its offering to consumers. Moreover, since the DATA Act requires the federal government to publish internal spending as well as internal grants and contracts, FindTheBest will be able to offer more comprehensive information.
"The passing of the DATA Act will allow us to expand into areas we've yet to consider and improve on hundreds of topics that involve government spending. Our ambition is to detail the full lifecycle of government spending -- from taxpayer dollars, Congressional appropriation, Treasury allocation and agency obligation to contractor payout -- but current data reporting practices have been prohibitive," said Nina Quattrocchi, a senior product associate at FindTheBest whose focus is building content around government spending.
About FindTheBest:
FindTheBest is a research engine focused on collecting, structuring, and connecting the world's data -- 60+ billion pieces of information to date -- to lead people to the best conclusions. FindTheBest's desktop site, mobile site and embeddable widgets let people thoroughly research all of their options in almost every topic, on one intuitive interface. FindTheBest is based in Santa Barbara, Calif. More information about FindTheBest is available at www.findthebest.com.
Media Contact:
Hillary Foss
hfoss@findthebest.com
(805) 617-1863
