Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards for compiling data across govt agencies and making it publicly accessible. But as of March 1, the Bush admin has announced that it is shutting down this site due to “budgetary constraints.”

Bush Admin Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Data
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:20:04 GMT

I actually went to the site and tried to use it. I have a curiosity about Housing Vacancies and Homeownership. I was immediately disappointed when that link did not go anywhere. It quickly became apparent that the site was re-packaging news releases from the Census and Bureau of Economic Analysis sites. After a little investigating I figured out that all of the data I was interested in was already available on the Census site. At least for me the economicindicators.gov site is redundant. If I am going to link to a site as a reference I am going to link to the source of the data. I am pretty disappointed that Forbes awarded it one of its “Best of the Web”. What were they thinking? From my short browsing experience I do not think economicindicators.gov adds any value to the web. I can probably create my own web page in five minutes with the correct links.