Very soon, it will become far more difficult for web surfers to track whether the U. S. is in fact sliding into a recession with the closing of the U. S. Department of Commerce’s EconomincIndicators.gov Web Site. As it is now, the site provides a public portal to key economic indicator data from the government. The Economics and Statistics Administration officially announced that the site will be shut down on March 1st because of budgetary constraints.
The site has been providing daily updates to key economic indicators released by the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U. S. Census Bureau. The site has been particularly useful because people have the option to sign up to receive e-mails as soon as new economic data across government agencies becomes available. This data will still be available online at various federal web sites, however if will be far less accessible to the public.
Within the email sent out by the Commerce Department is an offer for a free quarterly subscription to STAT-USA/Internet service that provides much the same economic and business data. This is a temporary subscription however, and once it runs out the public will be forced to pay a fee for the service. So not only will this economic data be more difficult to access, it will wind up costing the public money to access.
The timing of the closures has raised a few eyebrows among the public as well as the business community. One major reason is that it makes actually declaring a recession far more difficult, as the general consensus is that to say there is a recession would require two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Measuring that growth will now be far more difficult, a fact that raises questions about the legitimacy of the budget constraints that are causing the site to close down.
One question raised is that it doesn’t really take that much to keep a web site managed. With the resources of the government, keeping the public knowledgeable can’t be so unimportant that it isn’t worth the pittance that it costs comparatively. By taking away that knowledge the government has put a serious question in the minds of the public about the credibility of the information they are getting. While the information is indeed still available, the fact that it has been made so much more difficult to find has made the issue a hot topic among those that use the site.
Perhaps it is, indeed, just a question of finding every possible way to cut back costs in department, in which case the question is raised just how bad is the budget issue in the Commerce Department that such a small piece will make enough difference that it is worth the bad publicity it is garnering. While the conspiracy theories may well me just that, it speaks to the distrust that occurs when information isn’t readily available to the public. This proves once again that online information has officially become one of the most important ways for people to gain knowledge.
Share With Others
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...
February 21st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
What a bummer. I could think of a lot more places to cut back cost in their department than this. Unfortunate.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:46 am
As I see it, the goverment is slowly closing it doors. It seems that American’s society is slowly going into turmoil . Does anyone else share this reaction with myself. It’s only a matter of time before they shut down and we go into WWIII, just wait…