Transparency isn’t all about holding government accountable. As more and more information collected by government goes online, consumers are reaping a different benefit.
Writing in the New York Times, Richard H. Thaler, a economics and behavioral science professor at the University of Chicago, describes the payoff: potentially life-saving access to product recalls, airline pricing, job-hunting information, real-time tracking of bus and train arrivals and more.
Data, the Times observes, is not dull.
Thaler’s discussion of the trend is here. A list of Web sites and smartphone apps that synthesize the raw government data in practical ways is here.