VirginiaStimulus.org was built by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to apply ideas developed at the Mercatus Center about how transparency can improve public policy decisions.
VirginiaStimulus.org uses technology to elicit knowledge about projects and opportunities from the people who know the most about them, and harnesses the wisdom of crowds to learn about what the people affected think about potential projects. VirginiaStimulus.org can help the leaders of Virginia, as well as researchers and citizens alike, better understand how federal stimulus funds might be spent and to hold public officials accountable for their spending decisions. We do this by taking data from the Commonwealth’s forum, Stimulus.Virginia.Gov, and adding features that allow other citizens around the Commonwealth with local knowledge about the proposed projects to find, discuss, and rate those projects.
At this point these projects are only the requests and proposals from the public and are not actually funded through the stimulus. You can learn more by reading the FAQs.
How can you contribute? Find a project that interests you, or about which you have special knowledge, and let us know what you think. You can find projects by searching or by browsing by locality, category, or program type. Once you find a program, there are three things you can do: 1) vote on whether you believe the project is critical or not; 2) edit the project's description and points in favor or against, and 3) post a comment in the conversation about the project.
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Please note: Statistics update every 10 minutes
