Not all transparency experts talk trash about Recovery.gov

Some online transparency scholars working outside of Washington, D.C. are encouraged by features of the official Web site of Recovery.gov that tracks stimulus spending saying that they are impressed with the site’s ease of use. The site made its first post of stimulus data on October 15. -DB

NextGov
October 21, 2009
By Aliya Sternstein

Some online transparency scholars who work outside Washington say they are pleased with the newly released accountability features on Recovery.gov, a reaction that is in contrast to complaints aired by many open government activists about the site’s usability.

Recovery.gov, the official Web site tracking the $787 billion designed to stimulate the economy, imported on Oct. 15 the first-ever reports from aid recipients into interactive maps and downloadable spreadsheets. Many Washington-area government transparency activists criticized the way the data has been presented, saying the descriptions and project labels are not in plain English and the site’s search capabilities are limited.

Some academics outside Washington, however, who are less familiar with the site but are well-versed in the use of the Web in public policy, said they are impressed with the site’s tools.

“Things like the basic headers are pretty intelligible, [such as] ‘jobs awarded.’ That’s pretty straightforward,” said David Rand, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He coordinates a weekly seminar on emerging research about cooperation online and in the physical world.

The published reports are from firms that received federal stimulus contracts between Feb. 17 and Sept. 30 — and include the money the companies have spent, summaries of their projects, and the number of jobs the contracts have created or saved. Results of grants, loans and nonfederal contracts, which represent the bulk of the Recovery funds, will post on Oct. 30.

Rand had not heard the data was available until Nextgov contacted him. He immediately saw the possibilities of the data that the independent board overseeing the stimulus program had hoped the public would understand. “It would be cool to do a mashup where you could look at the unemployment and the funding to see how well those things track each other,” Rand said. A mashup is a visual display of data derived by combining statistics from various information sources.

“To have a full appreciation of what’s going on, I would have to spend more time [on the site], but it seems like a pretty awesome resource,” he added. “I had no idea that this was out there. And it seems like it totally should be and it makes me happy.”

When the board posted the reports on Oct. 15, traffic on the site jumped 52 percent from its daily average of 19,000 visitors to 28,895 visitors, according to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees stimulus spending. Users logged on from 137 countries and territories. Most visitors were from California, followed by New York and then the District of Columbia.

The site’s most popular features included the home page, the financial opportunities section and Where Is the Money Going? — an interactive map that displays the locations and details of stimulus-funded projects. Users can zoom in on locales by moving their mouse or typing in a ZIP code.

“For people who want to understand their own community and see how many jobs were created and [for the government] to have that kind of candor . . . it’s a great start,” said John Henry Clippinger, co-director of the Law Lab at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The law lab experiments with Web-based platforms and freely available software to develop tools that can enhance governance, entrepreneurship and human cooperation.

Clippinger doubted that the average citizen will visit the site, but said Recovery.gov will feed Web applications on outside sites and generate press stories that will trickle down to the public. “In time, what happens is that [Recovery.gov] becomes a reliable source that does provide accountability,” he said.

Stephen Schultze, associate director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and who describes himself as “an informal end user,” said he keyed in his ZIP code and obtained clear explanations of local projects. “No doubt there are some descriptions that are more opaque, but on a gut level I felt like I had a better understanding of the use of stimulus funds in my area,” he said.

Copyright 2009 NextGov