{"id":11990,"date":"2009-02-15T16:51:07","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T15:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.220.58.236\/blog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2009-02-15T16:51:07","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T15:51:07","slug":"using_business_intelligence_to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/using_business_intelligence_to.html","title":{"rendered":"Using Business Intelligence to Catch Wasteful US Spending?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Until recently, if you wanted to find out where your US taxpayer money was going, the best you could do was this handy wall chart from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wallstats.com\/deathandtaxes\/\">\u201cDeath &amp; Taxes\u201d web site<\/a>. Click on the image below to go to their site, where you can zoom in and see different parts of the image.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wallstats.com\/deathandtaxes\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" style=\"border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px\" height=\"308\" alt=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/USSpending.Gov_9CE1\/image_855a869d-9dea-4d0f-9030-7ce37cf0ba69.jpg?resize=480%2C308&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"480\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<h4>USA Spending.Gov<\/h4>\n<p>USA Spending.Gov gives you access to the same information in the form of a public database. It\u2019s the result of the 2006 Transparency Act which requires that a certain amount of information about each Federal contract must be included on a single, searchable website, accessible by the public, for free. It includes data from:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fpds.gov\/\">Federal Procurement Data System<\/a>, which contains information about federal contracts <\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/govs\/www\/faads.html\">Federal Assistance Award Data System<\/a>, which contains information about federal financial assistance such as grants, loans, insurance, and direct subsidies like Social Security. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Online information deserves online analysis<\/h4>\n<p>Using the labs version of Polestar OnDemand at <a href=\"http:\/\/polestar.ondemand.com\">http:\/\/polestar.ondemand.com<\/a>, it\u2019s easy to analyze this information. For example, I downloaded information about government contracts for the four BI megavendors \u2013 SAP, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, and combined it into a simple spreadsheet. (I later realized that I could have used the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usaspending.gov\/apidoc.php\">API interface<\/a> to get all the information in a single go.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/USSpending.Gov_9CE1\/polestar_usspending_2.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"polestar_usspending\" style=\"border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px\" height=\"360\" alt=\"polestar_usspending\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/USSpending.Gov_9CE1\/polestar_usspending_thumb.jpg?resize=480%2C360&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"480\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>&#160; <\/p>\n<p> Polestar lets me export the results as a handy image, ready for any presentation. It looks like there\u2019s some upside opportunity for SAP in US government contracts (presumably, an analysis of European contracts would show the proportions reversed).<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"govt spending by megavendor\" style=\"border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px\" height=\"194\" alt=\"govt spending by megavendor\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/USSpending.Gov_9CE1\/govt%20spending%20by%20megavendor_9f426813-ff41-413c-90dd-a37a0c5a2338.jpg?resize=480%2C194&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"480\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>I challenged some other people to take a look at the data. For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/adambinnie\" target=\"_blank\">Adam Binnie<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/decisionvelocity.net\" target=\"_blank\">DecisionVelocity Blog<\/a> came up with the following analysis of Hurricane Katrina contracts. It\u2019s easy to see at a glance how much of the business was awarded without any competitive tendering.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"katrina work not completed\" style=\"border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px\" height=\"225\" alt=\"katrina work not completed\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/WindowsLiveWriter\/USSpending.Gov_9CE1\/katrina%20work%20not%20completed_672b2441-17de-4f81-aa70-87dc5d1b61d9.jpg?resize=374%2C225&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"374\" border=\"0\" \/> <\/p>\n<h4>What can YOU come up with?<\/h4>\n<p>This is your opportunity to come up with interesting data about US government spending and share it with the rest of us. Are you up to the challenge?<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019d like to start with the examples above, download the data into a spreadsheet, and then go to <a href=\"http:\/\/polestar.ondemand.com\">http:\/\/polestar.ondemand.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usaspending.gov\/source.php\" target=\"_blank\">USA spending data files<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpdsng.com\/downloads\/top_requests\/katrina_contracts.xls\" target=\"_blank\">Katrina contracts excel spreadsheet<\/a>&#160;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/assets.timoelliott.com\/docs\/megavendors.xls\" target=\"_blank\">BI megavendors government contracts<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Track US Government spending thanks to USA Spending.Gov and Polestar OnDemand. What can YOU come up with?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,204,854,1004],"class_list":["post-11990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bi","tag-business-intelligence","tag-public-sector","tag-spend-analytics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/image_855a869d-9dea-4d0f-9030-7ce37cf0ba69-1.jpg?fit=480%2C308&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-37o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}