While I am hardly here to shill for Bloomberg, the introduction of Bloomberg Government into the market for government information does represent an important development worthy of highlighting. Coverage from a few weeks back is located here and here.
While I hope to explore the actual product in the coming months, the front page highlights both its coverage and its informational interface. Whether aimed at sophisticated and non sophisticated actors, the selection of this sort of dashboard style interface is important as it is precisely the sort of HCI that has been shown to help end users navigate complex information environments.
The ever increasing access to digitized governmental information provides a real arbitrage opportunity for a specific firm to serve as the default third party provider of that information. Whether Bloomberg Government will fill this void is likely a function of (1) the novelity of its informational inputs and (2) the quality of the HCI experienced by target end users. Only time will tell…