Federal agencies are required by law to justify their proposals before codifying them into active laws. And for good reason: changes in tax policy, for example, can affect the entire economy. However, “justification” typically comes in the form of estimates based on numbers crunched deep within the sunless bowels of places such as the Office of Tax Analysis. There, nameless bureaucrats calculate outcomes using undisclosed statistical models based on assumptions that the rest of us, including the lawmakers writing these laws, do not get to see.
Thanks to the Open Source Policy Center, however, the citizens of this great nation may now get a glimpse into the data, and the methods used to derive and analyze that data, that drive public policy and the creation of new laws. In short, this DC-based nonprofit organization seeks to let a little open source sunshine into the black box of government data modeling.
Read more at The New Stack
