Pitch Interactive has a great writeup on their “US Federal Contract Spending Data” visualization, the winner of the 2010 Design For America award for Visualization of Federal Budget Data. They show some of the graphics close-up, and discuss the process used to create the two-part graph.
What our government spends vs. how much we talk about it. Two important aspects that help define and shape our society. Most Americans know that our government spends an insane amount of our tax dollars on defense, but how do you show just how much we spend compared to all other areas in our country? We wanted to use a minimal approach with no labeling necessary. The design says it all and shows what almost 70% of Federal contract spending going to defense looks like com paired to all other agencies (Education get’s around 1%). For anyone asking for the numbers, scroll down this page. We’ve added all the data used to create the left visualization above.
For the right visualization, we used the New York Times API to parse through all articles written in 2009. Using general keywords that dealt with characteristics of each agency, we displayed their frequency usage in comparison with one another. The colors on the right rings are representative of their colors from the left. What we see is that all of the much less-budgeted agencies from the left ring are discussed about far more in our news. The Dept. of Health and Human Services, which was a major issue of discussion in 2009 with health care reform being hotly debated only accounts for about 4% of our federal budget, though it’s the most discussed issue in the media.
via US Federal Contract Spending Data Visualization :: Pitch Interactive, Inc..
