Recovery Archives

While perhaps not critical to the protection of life and property, the economic stimulus-tracking website Recovery.gov is exempt from the government shutdown. The site, which will be updated later this month, is funded through 2009 Recovery Act appropriations -- not the annual agency appropriations that Congress is debating today. A media release from the site's overseer, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Oversight Board, states:

In the event of a government shutdown, the Recovery Board will continue its regular operations because the agency is funded from an appropriation that continues to remain available until September 30, 2011. The government shutdown will not affect the ongoing recipient reporting for the first quarter of 2011, which is scheduled to continue until April 14. Data from those recipient reports will be posted on Recovery.gov on April 30.

The government's stimulus spending watchdog is set to launch a website on Monday that will track $10 billion in non-stimulus funding for education jobs, Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board announced on Wednesday. The board, which Congress established in 2009 to oversee $787 billion of economic recovery funding, will host FederalTransparency.gov while it continues to maintain the interactive stimulus-tracking site Recovery.gov.

The goal of the new site is more ambitious. Devaney has said it potentially could be used to monitor the impact of all federal funding. At this point, the board only is authorized to evaluate progress reports from recipients of stimulus funding and money disbursed under the Education Jobs Fund, which Congress created this summer.

"To avoid confusion, the board decided to establish a separate website to track spending under the new education program, which is not part of the Recovery Act. According to Devaney, the new site also will be used for any spending the board is asked to monitor in the future," board officials said in a press release.

The new site, at first, only will provide basic information, such as the total amount received by each recipient, the number of jobs funded and the status of projects, board officials said on Wednesday: "Over time, FederalTransparency.gov will have some of the same features as Recovery.gov,'' Devaney said. "We are putting up the site now as a placeholder so that the public can see where the money is going and where the jobs are being funded in states and territories.''

Under the education jobs program, the Education Department will distribute funds to states and U.S. territories, which will award the money to localities for hiring and rehiring school personnel. Schools are prohibited from using the funds for anything other than paying for salaries and benefits of education-related positions, such as teachers, librarians, secretaries, speech therapists and cafeteria workers.

On Election Night, California Republican Darrell Issa, the presumptive chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he intends to release more data about government operations and authorize federal inspectors general to do the same.

"I'm going to make sure that the 74 primary inspectors general are able to do their job -- and support them," Issa said, adding that he would "absolutely" advocate for granting IGs subpoena power. Only the Defense IG has that authority today.

Current Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., is expected to relinquish the committee gavel to Issa next year, when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives. And Issa is expected to raise the profile of a watchdog panel that quieted down in the presence of a president from the same side of the aisle.

The anti-bailout, anti-stimulus lawmaker is known for holding the Obama White House to account for claims of being the most transparent administration in history.

Almost daily, he points out apparent secretive acts, such as the alleged use of personal webmail accounts to sidestep federal recordkeeping.

But Issa also chastises the legislative branch and federal agencies for not disclosing enough information to taxpayers.

In March, he co-founded the bipartisan Congressional Transparency Caucus to champion the principles of free, online access to the government's information; publication of the government's information in raw, searchable formats that the masses can scrutinize; providing the public with federal spending data that can be linked to agency performance data; and tracking lawmaker pet projects - so-called earmarks - in the federal budget.

Around midnight, during a call with reporters, Issa said he would make sure that all on the phone line can get the data they need.

The head inspector of stimulus spending on Wednesday issued a formal white paper, imploring the administration to regulate the way federal agencies label awards so they all use a common naming convention for all types of loans, grants and contracts.

The lack of a uniform naming convention for awards is "the single biggest impediment to the kind of transparency that the Recovery Act envisions," said Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

Devaney's document details the technical problem, possible coding schemas and recommendations for immediate action by two federal councils. The RAT board chair raised similar points at a Senate hearing in August on the use of technology to detect fraud. Now he has articulated a formal proposition for spending overseers of the future.

Currently, each agency assigns numbers and/or letters to individual federal grants, which account for more than half a trillion dollars in annual funding, based upon that department's internal policies for coding awards. Federal acquisition regulations dictate how agencies are to ID contracts, but the guidelines are not specific, Devaney writes.

"One recommendation that would likely ease future reporting would be a standard Award ID structure with no hyphens or spaces. In addition, requiring that any alphabetical characters be capitalized and refraining from using any zeros or 'O's in the award ID would help to stave off reporting mistakes. Admittedly, human error will always be present; individuals can still mistakenly transcribe numbers, just as is occasionally done with credit card or telephone numbers. However, standardization of award IDs should significantly reduce such errors by limiting the types of errors that could be made," the white paper states.

Devaney then goes on to advise the Chief Financial Officers Council's Grants Policy Committee to establish a new policy on the use of a uniform, governmentwide award ID for federal financial assistance awards. He suggests that the Federal Acquisition Regulations Council propose a rule for a unique governmentwide contract vehicle identifier.

And then, so as not to create even more confusion, the two councils must "work together to ensure consistency between the two groups' approaches."

Some information technology contractors welcomed an announcement by President Obama on Wednesday that he proposes investing in infrastructure, such as advanced air traffic tech, as a way of stimulating the economy -- but expresses nervousness about how he intends to compensate for the cost.

In Ohio, Obama said, "We want to put more Americans back to work rebuilding America -- our roads, our railways, our runways." The fleshed-out plan involves focusing more money on NextGen, a sweeping effort to update air traffic control by replacing radar-based guidance with satellite-based navigation by 2018.

Industry groups and Republicans reportedly care more about extending Bush administration tax-cuts for the wealthy that are set to expire at the end of 2010.

The president did not mince words in saying he is against a continuation of the Bush-era income-tax rates.

"With all the other budgetary pressures we have -- with all the Republicans' talk about wanting to shrink the deficit -- they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires," Obama said.

Recently, the White House also has taken great care to warn businesses that the administration is not afraid to freeze or dismantle IT projects that are burning through taxpayer dollars without any indication of success. The Veterans Affairs Department killed 12 underperforming systems and, this summer, the White House put 30 major financial management systems on hold and put 26 mission-critical IT systems on a watchlist.

Trade group TechAmerica has told the Office of Management and Budget it wants to work with federal officials on fixing failing projects and reengineering the IT purchasing process -- but has opposed a wholesale halt on systems development. The association extended qualified support for Obama's new plan to spend more money on NextGen.

Industry members "applaud investments in 21st century infrastructure such as the modernization of America's air traffic control system," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said on Wednesday. "Still, many leaders in the private sector will remain uncertain until they understand the revenue raisers the president alluded to so briefly today. We would be disappointed to see any offsets that would constrain the very growth the president wants to promote."

The chairman of the board that oversees Recovery.gov released on Monday a statement promoting the transparency of the stimulus-tracking website, just as Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alleged the site is a public relations effort aimed at inflating the accomplishments of the administration.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member of the committee, repeatedly has knocked the accuracy of Recovery.gov, most recently by calling on federal auditors to investigate "propaganda" on the site, which is supposed to measure the number of jobs funded through stimulus dollars.

Also on Monday, committee Republicans released a report that they say examines numerous instances of misinformation spread by White House officials. The report stated:

Recovery.gov now displays jobs funded by the stimulus rather than the misleading 'jobs created or saved' figure. Still, there is no indication that the current figures are any more reliable than the ones touted by Vice President Biden and subsequently proven to be misleading and deceptive.

The number of jobs funded through the stimulus package during the quarter ending June 30 was 749,142, according to the latest tally on Recovery.gov.

Meanwhile, Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery and Accountability Transparency Board, posted a column on Recovery.gov that contradicted Issa's portrayal:

In creating the Recovery Act last year, lawmakers directed the board to build a 'user-friendly' website that would provide the utmost transparency in government spending. That objective has been achieved. Users can go on our website, Recovery.gov, pull out the raw data submitted by recipients, do their own analysis, and tell us when they find something that doesn't look right.

. . . Although this new level of transparency may not be obvious to casual observers, it is inspiring real transformation in the federal government. Looking at the broad picture, I do not believe the government can, or will, take a step backward. I expect future government spending to follow the Recovery Board's model of transparency. You, the decision makers, want transparency -- and you'll get it!

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at a hearing the other day criticized the head of the board overseeing stimulus spending for being unable to cite an instance where the board's analytical software prevented fraud and abuse.

Describing what hasn't happened?

"That's a difficult metric to talk about," replied Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

He was testifying on Tuesday before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on how the administration is using data-mining tools to cut improper payments.

Most of the significant cases the technology has helped uncover are among roughly 350 active criminal investigations, none of which are complete, Devaney explained.

"The program's been going on for a year and a half and you haven't completed one?" McCain asked. "Not one completed . . . That doesn't inspire confidence in me."

But Devaney didn't remain stumped for long. With a little prodding by Sen. Thomas R. Carper, a Delaware Democrat, Devaney noted that the analysis has resulted in the following:

• One federal agency canceled a research grant to a company after his staff discovered that the recipient had been previously debarred from receiving federal funds
• And an agency cancelled a company's contracts worth more than $7 million after his staff's analysis showed that the recipient had been debarred.

The financial regulatory overhaul that Congress passed this week is missing a major data transparency measure the House wanted, but the legislation still offers some Web-based windows into the financial system that previously were lacking.

Notably, the Wall Street reforms require the notoriously opaque Fed to post an audit of all Fed emergency lending that took place during the financial crisis:

GAO AUDIT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE FACILITIES; PUBLICATION OF BOARD ACTIONS. (a) GAO Audit- (1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding section 714(b) of title 31, United States Code, or any other provision of law, the Comptroller General of the United States (in this subsection referred to as the `Comptroller General') shall conduct a one-time audit of all loans and other financial assistance provided during the period beginning on December 1, 2007 and ending on the date of enactment of this Act by the Board of Governors or a Federal reserve bank under the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Term Auction Facility, Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II, Maiden Lane III, the agency Mortgage-Backed Securities program, foreign currency liquidity swap lines, and any other program created as a result of section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act (as so designated by this title). (2) ASSESSMENTS- In conducting the audit under paragraph (1), the Comptroller General shall assess-- (A) the operational integrity, accounting, financial reporting, and internal controls of the credit facility; (B) the effectiveness of the security and collateral policies established for the facility in mitigating risk to the relevant Federal reserve bank and taxpayers; (C) whether the credit facility inappropriately favors one or more specific participants over other institutions eligible to utilize the facility; (D) the policies governing the use, selection, or payment of third-party contractors by or for any credit facility; and (E) whether there were conflicts of interest with respect to the manner in which such facility was established or operated.

White House officials on Friday announced they will begin rolling out governmentwide a mashup device currently used to detect stimulus-spending fraud, but they also noted a technological weakness preventing agencies from quickly spotting potential improper payments.

As Nextgov first reported last fall, the Recovery Board, an independent agency charged with overseeing stimulus dollars, acquired an analytical program that identifies not-so obvious relationships between contractors and possible conflicts of interest. The application works by combining, or mashing up, data from multiple data sources on maps and other graphic illustrations.

On Friday, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will now start using the tool.

At the same time, President Obama issued a memo that directs agencies to consult many, many databases, including the Social Security Administration's file of deceased people and the General Services Administration's list of barred contractors, before releasing taxpayer dollars. It's possible that this lack of centralization could slow the administration's efforts to reduce the $100 billion in improper payments disbursed each year.

Today, there is no single system for checking whether a person is eligible to receive federal benefits, contracts and loans. The Recovery Board's device mainly targets repeat instances of fund mismanagement.

The administration in April said it intends to link the various contractor-related resources with a new system called the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS). Friday's memo directs OMB to draft a plan within four months for connecting the remainder of eligibility databases that are not yet accessible through the system.

Government Executive's Editor in Chief and FedBlog author Tom Shoop posted an item on Tuesday about Recovery.gov's mascot contest. From FedBlog:

The folks [at Recovery.gov] have posted an update on their Facebook page saying they're holding a contest to create a mascot that embodies the site's mission and purpose ("Think transparency and accountability!" they say.)

Shoop says given that the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (or "RAT") Board manages the site, a no brainer idea that would fit the "creativity and ingenuity" requirement the board has set would be something akin to a rodent. For transparency, he says maybe something along the lines of Casper (the one that's the Friendly Ghost).

Keeping with the transparency theme, I was thinking something more H.G. Wells-like.