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posted Dec. 16, 2009 
Website Tracks Stimulus Money
by Catherine Behan, Stimulus Watch
Stimulus Watch has official launched an improved version of a web utility allowing citizens (and contractors and government officials for that matter) across the country to weigh in on details about stimulus spending, job creation, waste or abuse using official data on stimulus spending, not just the wish lists before the Act was passed.
cartoon by David Dees
It allows citizens to get detailed information about, say, how stimulus dollars are being spent across the nation or Washington State or even within a particular city.
StimulusWatch.org helps the administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly, and to hold public officials to account for the taxpayer money they spend. We do this by allowing citizens around the country to employ their local knowledge to find, discuss and rate those projects. To learn more, check out the site tutorial and the FAQs at StimulusWatch.org.
The site includes:
· A Wiki feature to enable people to add local knowledge about the projects, big and small
· The ability for citizens to “vote” on whether a project is useful or not
· The ability to see how much money has gone to certain contractors across the nation, not just in a particular state.
The Obama White House has begun taking the first steps to keep its promise to be the most transparent and accountable administration in history. The Recovery Act makes raw spending data available precisely to make third-party sites like these possible. With initiatives like Recovery.gov and Data.gov, the administration is counting on citizens to slice and dice pubic data in innovative ways.
Stimulus Watch is interactive in a way one doesn't find in federal government sites. First, using voting and wikis, we are trying to gather knowledge from you about awards in your locality. Second, we allow you to discuss awards and express yourselves in a comments section for each award. To date, no federal site does this.
One thing to keep in mind about the official data is that it is comprised of "recipient reports." That is, the data is not gathered and tabulated by the federal government. Instead, it is the recipients of stimulus funds who report back on a quarterly basis about how much money they received and what they did with it. So, for example, if you find a contract on this site for a construction company that says it resulted in 10 jobs saved, it is that construction company who has made the estimate.♦
Catherine Behan is the communications manager for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.