Since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society anti-poverty campaigns of the 1960s, the federal government has spent trillions of dollars in a bid to foster an America “where the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” But big government spending has historically focused on relief rather than development; we keep people from falling through the cracks but rarely provide the resources they need to prosper. The massive infrastructure bill set to hit the Senate floor for debate on July 19 aims to develop and create a better future, but we must ensure that the unprecedented size of the proposed bill — or any other spending bills, for that matter — will not go to waste. Though financial transparency will be imperative with spending bills on the order of trillions of dollars, life outcome transparency is equally important — the government must ensure that the public will be able to see, in real time, the fruits of their investments, or whether that money could be better used elsewhere. In 2021, we can harness the power of digital technologies to do just that.

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