As our colleagues at OMB Watch blogged about yesterday, the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, of which Sunlight is a member, released more analysis (PDF) they've conducted of the Office of Management and Budget’s recent guidance (PDF) on how Recovery Act recipients should report how they used the funds. CAR’s analysis in a nutshell: “While this guidance is a step in the right direction, there is still much room for improvement.”

So far, OMB has provided guidance only for recipients of grants and loans. OMB Watch says that separate guidance for federal contractors is coming soon. OMB has started to flesh out the details of the reporting process, which up until this point have largely been vague and unformed, OMB Watch reports.

CAR lists the good and the bad about OMB’s guidance. First the good:

(T)he guidance provides a useful framework for reporting to a central data collection service, called FederalReporting.gov. The design of the system is scalable to ultimately have all recipients of Recovery Act funds, including multi-tier sub-recipients, report directly. The guidance also creates a distinction between sub-recipients and vendors, which will prove useful. At the same time, OMB allows prime recipients to delegate direct reporting to sub-recipients - except for jobs data - which will likely cause confusion. There is also significant ambiguity about penalties for reporting non-compliance.

And the bad:

(There is) a lack of multi-tier reporting, job quality data, and performance data information; that jobs information is still being reported as undefined full-time equivalents (FTEs); that it is not clear if the information will be publically accessible with easy to use machine-readable tools; and that OMB requires the use of DUNS numbers and poorly considered identifiers for sub-recipients.

CAP’s full analysis is here (PDF).

“A mixed review”…That’s the verdict the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR) has given the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) final guidance for reporting data on use of funds under the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Recovery Act. Sunlight's own review is far less mixed. (CAR’s press release can be accessed here (PDF).)

Speaking for the coalition, Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s director and CAR’s co-chair, applauded the significant transparency steps OMB has taken in certain key respects. However, much data from the recipients of Recovery Act funds will not be collected or disclosed according the the new guidelines. “If the Recovery Act is to fulfill President Obama’s promise about taxpayers being able to go online and see how every dime is spent, then we need sub-recipients’ and sub-sub recipients’ data online, too,” Gary said. “This not only includes how the money was spent but also who benefited.” CAR believes its essential to collect data on race, class, gender, disability and other measures of equity in order to properly assess the success of the Recovery Act.

Also absent from the new instruction is  a requirement to make raw data public. By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency  is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure.

CAR was formed to promote accountability for both federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars, for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. The best way to assure taxpayers that the funds are being used responsibly is to provide full transparency on stimulus spending and to make the details of the stimulus available in online, in real time.

The direction Reovery.gov is heading is not good enough.

Recovery.gov is off to a good start. Good design. Nice visuals. Early opportunity for citizen engagement. (Others think so too.) But I'd like to be the boring person here in the transparency community and say: keep your eye on the ball. For the site to be successful it has to get the fundamentals right -- transparency for the data it will house.

The basics are pretty simple. Recovery.gov must make the raw data available and it must be housed in system so that data can flow in and out easily. There should be open programming interfaces that allow developers to share and analyze data. Timeliness is key, so is accuracy. That, plus a few simple tools for easy citizen access would be a great place to start.

A little blogging now might help with a few of the basics: What data is getting collected and how often? Who has to report? How often will the data be updated and how often will it made available to the public? What's the database going to look like what's the relationship to USASpending.gov? What kinds of content will Recovery.gov produce around the data? (Will there be regular emails when new information is available, blogging with analysis, etc.)?

The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery has some additional ideas.

A week ago, I blogged about the launch of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR). The coalition (of which Sunlight is a member) formed to promote accountability for the  federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars, for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. CAR’s vision for a national system to collect and disseminate data on government spending is here (pdf).

It's worth delving into that document. Its bottom line: CAR is calling for online reporting that allows the public to easily search, sort, track and download data on the use of funds from the massive Stimulus Bill.

The document proposes  USASpending.gov, the federal Web site that discloses information about nearly all government spending, as the "data house" for the Recovery Act (and other government) spending. But as Greg Elin, Sunlight’s chief evangelist, in a comment to my blog, wrote,  that might not be enough: “Spending from the Stimulus package will show up in USASpending.gov, but only at the federal contract level.”

Clearly a system needs to be in place to track the spending and all of its impacts. We should be able to know what’s happening with the money at all levels and all stages. Thus far, Congress has been far too vague about what it expects the online sites to provide. And we want to make sure we end up with a system that provides the most transparency and accountability as possible.

Be sure to check CAR.

There's a bit of irony in this story.

House Republican leaders are calling for Democrats to post the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, online immediately. In a letter sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the GOP leaders write that having the bill online would allow citizens to study its contents before Congress agrees to it and the president signs it into law. The GOP leadership is correct to, on behalf of the American people, claim the right “to see each provision of this legislation and evaluate the merit of each dollar of government spending their children and grandchildren are being required to fund."

Too bad they haven't always been for such transparency.

Since inception, Sunlight has been calling for exactly this sort of openness. We think all legislation should be posted on line for 72 hours before debate. We're hoping now that alot of Republicans will sign onto this measure when it's reintroduced in this Congress.

In the wake of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and while Congress debates the massive stimulus bill,  the  Coalition for an Accountable Recovery was created to promote accountability for both federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars,  for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. The best way to assure taxpayers that the funds are being used responsibly is to provide "radical" transparency on stimulus spending and to make the details of the stimulus available in online, in real time.

No great surprise to here that the Coalition (of which Sunlight is a member)  is calling on Congress to require online reporting that allows the public to easily search, sort, track and download data on the use of recovery. Each state should be required to report on all funds they receive and all data should be presented in a uniform manner, making sure it is compatible with the USASpending.gov Web site. The Coalition has also state that   the newest technology should be applied to both the Recovery.gov Web site and USASpending.gov to make the information more accessible for everyone

Sunlight has joined the over 30  groups as part of the coalition, including the Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, National Institute for Money in State Politics, OMB Watch, OpenTheGovernment.org, Project on Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Commonsense.