Microsoft has thrown its hat into the ring to claim a share of US Stimulus money, and it’s doing it in a different way than you might expect. They’ve just rolled out “Stimulus360”, which is a software tool for managing data related to the stimulus.
Stimulus360 “is really a graphical dashboard, mapping and data visualization with business intelligence wrapped around,” said Teresa Carlson, Microsoft’s vice president for federal government.
There are provisions in the stimulus bill for publicly broadcasting data on how and where the money is spent, and these are in the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (ARRA). As the provisions of that act are still in-flux, Microsoft is throwing it’s software engineering expertise to develop a suite of tools to allow visualization and analysis of the ever-changing data.
Currently only 6 state governments are using it, but it’s growing quickly to include more data and functionality.
via New stimulus tracking tools available — Government Computer News.
