About AccountableGuv

Our mission

Accountability starts with understanding the impact of government spending. By understanding the flow of funds, we can better assess the impact of government decisions, and that is where accountability begins.

The mission is to make it easy for anyone to see how public funds are collected and spent, then use trusted, public data to understand who is impacted and how. Clear, accessible insights should help people examine, discuss, and improve the results, free of political bias.

Our approach

01 / Analyze: Follow the Money!

Bring together trustworthy public records and datasets to understand the flow of government funds. Explore the Net Income dashboard to follow federal net receipts using the U.S. Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS).

02 / Connect: Capture the Impact

Relate legislation and policy choices to the agencies, programs, and operations they shape. Use their own public data to illustrate the real-world effects.

03 / Discuss: Build shared context

Present findings clearly so people can debate the evidence and possible changes constructively.

Learning from existing work

USAFacts is an inspiration for this project. Its approach to making government data understandable reflects the value I hope to contribute. This project is also a personal learning effort: an opportunity to work directly with the sources, understand their limitations, and build the systems that support useful analysis.

AccountableGuv is a separate project and is not affiliated with USAFacts. I strongly urge folks to subscribe to their reports. The narratives and data are superb, and USAFacts lobbies hard to ensure that public data remains public.

Origins

Throughout my career as both a software engineer and a technology manager, I brought together spending, business operations, software delivery, sales, and usage data to understand the results of business decisions. Connecting those sources made it possible to examine investment returns, service costs, and customer profitability, and to give leaders a clearer basis for action.

This project began with a question: could that same approach help make government performance easier to understand? Public agencies publish substantial amounts of quality information, but availability alone does not make that information coherent or clear. Data is often fragmented and lacks context, making it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about government performance.

AccountableGuv is an opportunity to investigate those connections firsthand while fostering deeper knowledge of public datasets and the engineering needed to make them useful to users and elected officials.

Tracking Government Impact (Return on Investment)

Return on Investment (ROI) is a key metric for evaluating the effectiveness of business investments. It is typically measured in dollar terms (e.g., revenue, profit, or cost savings).

In government, the impact of spending is often measured in terms of social outcomes (e.g., improved public health, education, or infrastructure). This project aims to connect government spending with legislation, policy, programs, and operations to provide a clearer picture of how public funds are used and their impact on society.

The long-term goal is to connect government revenue and spending with legislation, policy, programs, and operations, then present the evidence in clear, accessible terms. That means answering the questions: what was invested, what outcomes were intended, who was affected, and what the available data can tell us about the results.

The aim is to evaluate evidence without confirmation bias. This can only be achieved when there is a clear understanding of the intended impact of government decisions (i.e., success criteria). Any assessment of government performance or the effectiveness of public spending must be based on the intended outcomes, not just the financial inputs and outputs. With this in mind, any meaningful performance or impact assessment requires explicit success criteria, appropriate context, and a clear account of uncertainty (though we'll try to minimize it). At a minimum, if the lawmakers aren't able to provide success criteria (the intended impact), then one has to challenge the investment altogether.

Engineering and the use of AI

I am a certified AWS Solutions Architect, and this project gives me hands-on experience with software and cloud engineering beyond the opportunities available in my management work. It uses cloud native services where practical, including AWS for data processing and hosting, and Tableau for visualization. The architecture is predominantly serverless.

I use AI tools, including Codex, to help generate and validate HTML, Python scripts, and infrastructure configuration. I define the requirements and approach, review and refine the output, and remain responsible for the implementation. These tools help me work through the detail of complex systems while continuing to learn how those systems operate.

Transparency applies to the engineering as well as the analysis. Readers should be able to understand where the data came from, how it was processed, and how public facing content is derived from it. I will do my best to maintain this transparency throughout the project.

The government data sources page explains the implemented architecture, source data, transformations, and limitations.

All the implementation details are available in the implementation details page. In addition, the source code for the project is available on GitHub, including scripts for data processing and visualization. I'm happy to collaborate and accept contributions!

A longer-term vision for civic discussion.

Over time, I hope to create space for balanced, evidence-based discussion about government decisions and the work of elected officials. Shared facts can provide a stronger foundation for evaluating performance than campaign messaging alone.

Discussion features are an aspiration, not a current capability. Building them would require a thoughtful approach to moderation and participation so that conversation remains useful and respectful.

The broader ambition is to bring public officials and the people they represent into open discussion of evidence, outcomes, and possible improvements. Accountability becomes more practical when people can understand the information, question the conclusions, and work together across party affiliations.

Guiding principle

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”

— Ayn Rand