Disclaimer: I've been involved in the us government data world for about a decade, I'm a core contributor to the openstates project, and I co-founded and help to run a (for profit) company in this space. I've met Josh in passing, and am super impressed by what he's done with Govtrack.
The core mistake people make with almost all government data tools and projects is assuming if they build it at an MVP level, people will come. The market of people who actually want the underlying stuff being offered, will pay for it with money or at least attention, don't need an SLA or dedicated account manager for it, and are ok with starting out with less than 100% data coverage is really small.
It seems logical that there would be a ton of people, from journalists to poli sci professors who are interested in the sorts of projects josh is highlighting. In reality, most of those people are on a shoestring budget and OK just going to the original source, OR they're betting their job on it, so they need production quality, and consistent coverage of every <whatever X you're doing>. Most everyday people aren't actually interested in looking up the text of the bills they see argued about on CNN, or what chain of PACs their rep takes money from. The paid products are way upmarket from an individual, and tend to include substantial training and account management services, a focus on things like fancy reporting, CRM features, and preemptive alerting.
In reality most of the well known US government data projects (openstates, opensecrets, govtrack) are more like traditional startups, they succeed on a combination of having (had) a stable source of funding, good marketing, and sometimes the sheer force of will of one or more people.
There's nothing wrong with building tools that aren't _for_ anyone specific, but it's important to know going in that you might be the only one who thinks they're super valuable.
The core mistake people make with almost all government data tools and projects is assuming if they build it at an MVP level, people will come. The market of people who actually want the underlying stuff being offered, will pay for it with money or at least attention, don't need an SLA or dedicated account manager for it, and are ok with starting out with less than 100% data coverage is really small.
It seems logical that there would be a ton of people, from journalists to poli sci professors who are interested in the sorts of projects josh is highlighting. In reality, most of those people are on a shoestring budget and OK just going to the original source, OR they're betting their job on it, so they need production quality, and consistent coverage of every <whatever X you're doing>. Most everyday people aren't actually interested in looking up the text of the bills they see argued about on CNN, or what chain of PACs their rep takes money from. The paid products are way upmarket from an individual, and tend to include substantial training and account management services, a focus on things like fancy reporting, CRM features, and preemptive alerting.
In reality most of the well known US government data projects (openstates, opensecrets, govtrack) are more like traditional startups, they succeed on a combination of having (had) a stable source of funding, good marketing, and sometimes the sheer force of will of one or more people.
There's nothing wrong with building tools that aren't _for_ anyone specific, but it's important to know going in that you might be the only one who thinks they're super valuable.