Steve Ballmer's USAFacts site surfaces government spending
The former Microsoft CEO has built a database using government data so you can track where the money goes.
Steve Ballmer has a new project that'll help you uncover just where your tax dollars are going.
Ballmer, who worked at Microsoft for more than 30 year before retiring as CEO in 2014, started developing a database shortly afterward to look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments, the New York Times reported Monday.
USAFacts is a "first-of-its-kind platform to help interested citizens learn the facts about government in a comprehensive, nonpartisan way," the not-for-profit group's site states. In the New York Times interview, Ballmer added, "I would like citizens to be able to use this to form intelligent opinions ... on common data sets that are believable."
According to the Times, Ballmer spent more than $10 million between direct funding and grants on the three-year project, which was built by a team of researchers in Seattle and the University of Pennsylvania. The site uses only government data to avoid accusations of bias.