Recovery Blog

Transparency isn’t transparency if you cannot understand the information being presented on a government website.

That’s why we have concentrated so intensely on improving Recovery.gov, the Recovery Board’s website that posts spending data from recipients of Recovery Act funds along with financial reports from the 28 federal agencies that distribute the money.

Of course, no system is perfect.  Data quality is essential to transparency and in the early days of the program, back in October 2009, the quality of some recipient reports was, to put it mildly, poor. Over time, the reports improved markedly—so much so that we now consider data quality to be excellent.

At the direction of the Recovery Board, the staff continues making improvements to the website so that users—the public, the press, watchdog organizations, and others—can access information easily and understand what they are reviewing.

Our latest innovation is something we call the Recipient Projects Map. Take a look and I think you will find it even easier to get the information you want from Recovery.gov. Simply put, you can access state summaries, profiles of recipients, and award summaries all in one place. Consistent with the Board’s long-standing approach to transparency, this new tool provides detailed information on spending at the local level. The information comes from quarterly spending reports submitted by recipients.

Let’s take a quick tour:

Recovery.gov offers several ways to easily access the Recipient Projects Map.  Here are two of them:  Go to Recovery.gov and click on any state on the blue map located on the top right side of the homepage.  Or, alternatively, go to the top of the homepage and click on the “WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?” drop down menu and select recipient and agency data to get to the projects map.

Once on the map page, it’s easy to get a lot of information on who is getting what in a specific state.

Let’s take Louisiana, for instance. Right off, you can see that 3,142 awards, totaling $3,348,350,744, have been made in that state during the life of the Recovery program. In the filters at the top of the page, you can enter specific criteria to narrow your search.

Select the Education category, click “Go’’ on the right side of the page, and up pops the total funds awarded for education programs ($1,191,974,762), the total awards (794), and the number of jobs funded in the April-June 2012 quarter (277).  If you are interested in details about a specific recipient, just click on the “profile’’ link and get the information you need.

I won’t belabor my point on the usability of this tool. Don’t take my word for it. Visit us at Recovery.gov, access the Recipient Projects Map, and decide for yourself.

 – Michael Wood, Executive Director, Recovery Board

VIDEO: How To Use the Recipient Projects Map

There’s a lot of talk these days about “thought leaders,” individuals or organizations that produce and act on innovative ideas. Indeed, one could argue quite convincingly that the Recovery Board has more than its share of thought leaders.  Since its inception, the Board has been results-driven.

Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in February of that year.  The new Recovery Board, consisting of Inspectors General from various federal agencies, was directed to establish and maintain a public website that would provide “detailed information’’ on contracts, grants, and loans issued under the Recovery Act. The law also directed the Board to maintain a vigilant oversight program that would “prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.’’

The job was daunting, and senior Board officials were literally racing against the clock. The Office of Management and Budget, which writes the guidelines for the Recovery program, required that recipients begin reporting spending data on October 1, 2009. That didn’t allow for a lot of time to build the infrastructure necessary to collect and display data from more than 100,000 recipients of Recovery funds and to develop a tough oversight program.

What to do? The Board and senior officials—including then Chairman Earl E. Devaney, myself, and a handful of staff members—decided we needed an innovative plan or we would face the unpleasant consequences of failure:  Condemnation from official Washington, the public, and the news media.

For starters, we cut through government red tape. We assembled an agile IT team from other agencies, we expedited contracting, and we established firm deadlines for the task ahead. This was the task: (1) assemble a website to collect quarterly spending data from recipients of Recovery contracts, grants, and loans; (2) manage the public website, Recovery.gov, created by the General Services Administration before the Board was up and running, while developing a second version that could handle massive amounts of recipient data; and (3) create a robust oversight program that would prevent criminals from stealing Recovery funds.

Not everything went smoothly but in the end we accomplished the task in what for government amounted to light speed. A summary:

• FederalReporting.gov, activated in August 2009, was unique in government.  As a rule, federal agencies that issue awards collect data from their respective recipients. FederalReporting.gov became the first government website to collect data on all agency awards in a single system. This was no small accomplishment: 28 federal agencies distribute funds under the Recovery program. The Board has overseen 12 recipient reporting periods without any major blunders.

• FederalReporting.gov transfers its data to Recovery.gov. The new version of Recovery.gov was launched on September 28, 2009, and provides real transparency to users. There’s easy access to quarterly spending data. Information is displayed through interactive, searchable maps; data downloads and tables, charts and graphs; videos; feature stories; and Social Media. Users can find information about Recovery programs in their own states and communities.  There’s also information on federal Recovery programs and oversight activities, including audits and reviews conducted by agency Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office.

• The state-of-the-art Recovery Operations Center, launched in November 2009, is the centerpiece of the Board’s oversight program. As it evolved, the ROC became a focused, intelligence-sharing center for the oversight community, particularly those Inspectors General who monitor the Recovery program.  In tracking fraud, waste, and abuse, ROC analysts have turned up significant investigative leads for the IG community.  Meanwhile, several IG offices have been given access to ROC tools so they can conduct research from their own workstations.

Looking back, it’s apparent our work transformed the way the government tracks spending on contracts, grants, and loans. We focused the discussion on what it truly means to provide transparency and accountability in a government program. A lot of public officials talk about how they favor transparency and accountability and how they are going to change this and that.  But results matter, not talk, as the Board has demonstrated.

Chairman Devaney, his work done, retired last December but we didn’t miss a beat. His successor, Kathleen Tighe, seamlessly picked up the baton and began directing us on our remaining challenges. Under her leadership, the Board is promoting the idea of a universal award ID for all government contracts, grants, and loans. A uniform ID would enhance transparency, making it much easier to track and reconcile funds awarded to recipients of federal funds.

We are also preparing to launch a pilot project later this year to determine the viability of a single electronic data collection system for government grants. A select group of recipients will participate. The Grants Reporting Informational Project will require recipients to report only one time on their grants, eliminating the burdensome requirement of filing separate reports with each agency involved in the grants.

The Board is continuing to improve Recovery.gov, which serves as the principal Recovery contact for taxpayers. Most recently, we added a new feature that allows access to summary data on each federal agency that distributes Recovery funds.  The feature highlights how much money an agency has distributed to recipients along with information on the top recipients in states and cities.

Under the Recovery Act, the Board is scheduled to expire on September 30, 2013. But there’s plenty of work to do, and we will continue to advance ideas that promote transparency and accountability in government.

– Michael Wood, Executive Director, Recovery Board

Any large government program can be confusing and difficult to understand. The $840 billion Recovery program is no exception, and that’s why the Recovery Board is continually finding ways to make it easier to understand information posted on Recovery.gov.

Federal agencies — 28 of them — distribute funds under the Recovery program.  How much money has a specific agency distributed to recipients? How much has an agency paid out for contracts, grants, and loans? How much for entitlements? Today (July 2), the Recovery Board is unveiling a new page that will give users of Recovery.gov easy answers to those questions, along with other information.

These agency summaries will be available by simply clicking on the “Where is the Money Going?’’ line atop any Recovery.gov page. Then click on “Agency Data” and go to “Agency Profiles.” Here’s what you’ll find, based on reports submitted to the Recovery Board by individual agencies or recipients of Recovery funds:

• The total amount awarded by an agency along with an up-to-date total of funds actually paid out to recipients.

• A breakdown of funding for contracts, grants and loans by categories, including education, transportation, housing and health.

• The amount of entitlements paid out in similar categories.

• The number of awards reported by recipients.

• The number of projects yet to get under way along with the number completed.

• The estimated jobs funded in each quarter.

• The states, cities, and recipients receiving the most funds.

We think this new page will enlighten you about the Recovery program and we would like to hear from you.

– Michael Wood, Executive Director, Recovery Board