BC Budget Visualization Tool from blprnt on Vimeo.
On the way out of a meeting last Friday a couple of colleagues and I walked by a street promotion for the new BC Lotto game Lotto Max that is replacing the Lotto Super 7. The resulting conversation turned to our surprise at the extensive funding cuts in the arts. I’ve heard stats about the funding cuts being as high as 90%. The three of us wondered out loud how much the Lotto Corp is making in profit and how much of a difference it would make to people if the weekly winnings were say $8M instead of $10M. I had a look at the current jackpot and it’s $15M with a maximum jackpot set at $50M. Wow.
It made me think of an advice column in this month’s Wired magazine that recommended to a father to apply John Stuart Mill’s “Greatest Happiness Principle” to the decision about whether to let his son dismantle his old, but still functional, laptop vs. donating it to charity. How would the distribution of lotto funds look if this principle were to be applied?
Unfortunately, the decision for this family is much simpler than the one facing our Provincial community. Community decisions require consensus across large numbers of individuals and groups, policy needs to be applied, administrative overhead needs to be managed, and good cause is pitted against good cause. The choices are never simple and there is often so much information we drown in the details. I’ve often wondered if Visual Analytics could be used effectively by community groups to cut through the information glut to champion their cause.
Notice that the article even mentions potential data quality problems which readers then promptly comment upon and provide related information. This is community in action.