OMB needs to ensure more accountability for stimulus spending

The Office of Management and Budget has not implemented recommendations that demand more accountability from recipients of stimulus funds and agencies that distribute funds, federal auditors confirmed.

Recipients who received stimulus money are required to submit spending data to FederalReporting.gov, a password-protected data warehouse operated by the government, by Oct. 10. Agencies and recipients will then have 20 days to review and correct the data before it is published Oct. 30 on the public stimulus tracking site Recovery.gov.

Concerns have been raised about the reliability of the data because OMB guidance does not require certification of the data to be published, according to a report the Government Accountability Office released on Wednesday.

"We continue to believe that there needs to be clearer accountability for the data submitted and during the subsequent federal review process," GAO said. In general, the GAO analysis found that stimulus funds are providing relief to states and localities but reporting challenges remain.

Neither recipients nor the agencies administering the funds are required to approve the data before publication, after which the data cannot be changed.

"Even the most diligent of agencies are likely to let material omissions and serious errors through," said Craig Jennings, a senior policy analyst at government transparency group OMB Watch. "It would help a lot if OMB implemented a look-back process so that agencies have a larger time frame to review the data."

He suggested OMB give agencies about 40 days to check the data or establish a special review period at the end of the fourth quarter. "You don't want to say this data is going to be forever malleable," Jennings said. "The idea is to give agencies a long enough period in which they can reasonably be allowed to find errors and missed submissions."

The certification onus should be on recipients, he said. In addition, OMB should perform its own quality assessments and corrections, including matching recipient reports with Treasury Department account data. "Agencies are providing weekly reports on money obligated and paid out; recipients are reporting on what they spent," Jennings said. "The only true verification is the Treasury figures, as they write the checks."

A three-step check on the data should sharpen the accuracy of the spending data, including recipient certification, a lengthy review by agencies and verification with Treasury records by OMB, he added.

Officials with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees the stimulus spending, said it is critical that agencies carry out thorough quality reviews.

"It is not our business to tell federal agencies what to do, but the Recovery Board believes that the agencies should conduct quality reviews or suffer the consequences of potential embarrassment," board spokesman Ed Pound said. "They should be doing these reviews on the basis of good government. Our hope is that there will be no inaccurate data that gets into the database and making data quality reviews will go a long way toward that."

The OMB guidelines state that prime recipients are responsible for performing a data quality review, agencies have limited responsibility to review the data to notify recipients of changes needed and the board is responsible for establishing data quality expectations.

OMB officials responded to GAO's latest recommendations by agreeing, in concept, but questioned the feasibility of certification given the tight time frames for reporting and reviewing, according to the report. OMB staff stated that the agency will evaluate quality issues each quarter, and OMB wants to determine whether quality problems are persistent before determining if certification is necessary.

Auditors said they will continue to monitor the situation, and they understand that OMB will need time to assess the quality of the data. GAO officials added that there may be a better alternative to certification that would ensure reliability.