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“Federal agencies are grabbing ever-more power over ever-more of the economy… Someone has to hold the bureaucracy accountable, and AEI’s new effort is a welcome attempt to do so.” Wall Street editorial about government transparency and the new AEI Open Source Policy Center.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 4, 2016 CONTACT: mediaservices@aei.org, 202.862.4870 Washington, DC – Lack of transparency in government is often discussed and worrisome at best. In fact, secret calculations are at the very heart of the economic policy making process. Federal agencies and offices, from the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress to the Office of Tax Analysis and the Office of Management and Budget in the executive branch, crunch numbers using hidden computer models. The resulting forecasts are then used by the President and Congress to arrive at policy conclusions impacting millions of Americans. Today’s system puts power in the hands of a few.
In a bipartisan, all-inclusive effort to make economic policy analysis more transparent, accessible, and scientific, scholars at the American Enterprise Institute’s Open Source Policy Center (OSPC) have pioneered a new approach to policy analysis based on open source economic modeling, collaborating with a nationwide and bipartisan community of economists, software developers, and policy experts.
Today, OSPC launches its first web application, TaxBrain, which allows the public and experts alike to study the effect of individual income and payroll tax policy reforms using open source economic simulation models.
This breakthrough in open source public policy research inaugurates a new era in government transparency by making economic modeling and data analysis both accessible and collaborative.
Matt Jensen, the managing director of the Open Source Policy Center described the project this way: “By adopting an open source approach, we are able to provide policy makers, journalists and the general public with the information they need to understand policy. We are also able to leverage the knowledge and interest of experts and the general public to improve our models and make government better.”
Continuum Analytics, one of the open source contributors to the economic simulation models seen in the OSPC, is the creator of Anaconda, the platform that powers the TaxBrain web application. “Anaconda is the leading modern open source analytics platform. Our company is dedicated to the open source movement and driving adoption of it affects positive change across all sectors,” said Travis Oliphant, CEO and co-founder of Continuum Analytics. “Our work with the OSPC has helped charter a new course for transparency in government using an open source approach. This breakthrough allows citizen data scientists – economists, researchers and everyday people – to improve policy and strengthen our democracy.”
Jensen reminds us that to improve TaxBrain, everyone is welcome to contribute their expertise to the development of the economic simulation models and the web application itself.
To interview Matt Jensen or for more information on the Open Source Policy Center and the TaxBrain web application, please contact Matthew Devine at matthew.devine@aei.org or 202.862.4870.
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To learn more about the OSPC project and how to use the Tax Brain tool, you are invited to attend Introducing the Open Source Policy Center: Making tax policy transparent, accessible, and collaborative, a public event featuring demos of the Tax Brain application and tutorials with contributors. The event will be held at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, April 14 at 5:45pm. Click here to RSVP and for more information.
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