Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Official Websites Track Stimulus Programs and Payments



Last week, the White House and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which is responsible for overseeing Federal agencies' expenditure of recovery funds, launched a new website, Recovery.gov, to provide information to the public at large about the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Mandated under several sections of the bill's accountability provisions, the site contains projections on the bill’s anticipated effect on public investment and job creation, as well as some simple charts and graphs depicting where the stimulus money is going, a useful timeline showing all the reporting requirements for federal agencies and groups slated to receive stimulus money, and a list of announcements about guidance and other ARRA news.

Recovery.gov should provide an active gateway to ongoing stimulus and recovery measures under the ARRA, particularly with the site's focus on the funds that are allocated for different programs, as well as the responsible Federal agencies. According to the site's frequently asked questions (FAQ) section, as Federal agencies and other recipient organizations report information about their spending plans, that data will be reported on the web page. Although the Recovery.gov does not yet have any RSS feeds established for users to be alerted to updates to the page, users can sign up for email updates using a simple form accessed by entering your email address in a box in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

It should be noted that Recovery.gov tracks only the targeted investments allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Data about specific types of contracts, grants, loans, and spending across government agencies can be found at a sister website, USASpending.gov. The sister site is a bit more data intensive and less user-friendly, and does not offer email or RSS updates.