I chose to look at the LA Control Panel’s Payroll By Department. I was somewhat surprised to see how funds were distributed and what departments required the most funding. The dataset shows the amount of funding each city department received from 2011 to 2013. It shows how much funding the departments have received over time in different graph formats.
According to Wallack’s and Srinivasan’s definition, the ontology of the dataset is the City government and the larger United States government because the data displayed is the city government’s payrolls and allocation of funds which is also representative of the US government as a whole . The site clearly maps out where all of its funding is distributed and in that way it represents its interests and activities of the city. The ontology of the data represents the interests of the government because it was sorted and published by a government agency. The way they display their data is cognizant of how they would like to be perceived. However, the data is held accountable by its viewers, the public, and there is a section for leaving comments so in that way the community also contributes to the site’s ontology. I found the data very illuminating because it was so clearly laid out and did not seem to have much of an agenda. However, I did find that the lack of breakdown in what the money is going towards in each department was troubling
The Dataset shows me where my taxes are going and how much funding each department receives. It is clear from the charts that LAPD, Water and Power, and Airports receive the most funding while many other departments that seem to be struggling receive a small fraction of funding. There is no description of what the section labeled other is. I am not sure what departments are in that section and the fact that they receive the least funding and are not named is worrying. There are also no descriptions of the agencies or what they do, although a quick google search can show you.
I would gather information from different communities and see how they thought or wished their tax money was being spent and then compare it to how it is actually being spent. Or I would get the different departments budgets and cost needs and reference that against the funds being allocated. It would be interesting to see how the departments divided up the funding if they all had a say in it.