Since Congress passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, (also known as the Coburn-Obama bill) which mandated the Office of Management and Budget to create a searchable online database of all government spending (USASpending.gov), Betanews reports that Rhode Island is the latest state to build a similiar Web site. Rhode Islands is actually the 22nd state to have opened its books to the online world.

Betanews says that eight more have legislation pending to do the same. The article states that that Missouri’s Accountability Portal (Go Show-Me State!) is the most comprehensive of all the state online information sites.

This is a great development.