Stimulus data needs context so public can understand spending effects

Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney says stimulus Web site will be clearer with new features. Chris Flynn

The government should place the spending results of the economic stimulus package in better context so the public can more easily comprehend the effects of the program, according to a recently released report on pressures the U.S. grants system faces under the $787 spending package.

"People need to be able to understand what they are seeing," stated a study by the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government, a research program led by the information technology firm CGI and academic institutions. The government should provide "accessible analyses that make sense out of thousands of individual stimulus projects in a way that is meaningful to generalists, not just specialists," it recommended.

CGI circulated the November 2009 report the first week of January. Last summer, the government awarded CGI a nearly $20 million contract to build FederalReporting.gov, a secure site that funding recipients use to update the government on the status of projects, job creation and money spent. Stimulus fund recipients have until Jan. 15 to report through the site on second quarter spending activities. On Jan. 30, the government will publish statistics on the public stimulus-tracking site, Recovery.gov.

On Recovery.gov, "it's not difficult to go through a series of grant awards and pick out a few with funny-sounding titles" to publicize in attacks against the administration's efforts, said the report's author Timothy Conlan, a George Mason University professor who studies federalism and intergovernmental relations. "And they are not necessarily evidence of failure."

He said the agencies awarding these funds need to put the broad patchwork of nationwide projects into perspective on the Web. Only agencies, which sanction the projects, can instruct recipients on how to clarify their data.

Conlan praised the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which maintains Recovery.gov, for helping the pubic visualize the effects of stimulus spending with an interactive, searchable map.

But the report warned that transparency, including the information provided by Recovery.gov, could be used to question even the best-run programs and potentially undermine public support rather than encourage program improvement.

For example, "News organizations ran critical stories about a stimulus project to fund turtle crossings under a highway in Florida, after the project was highlighted in a report by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.," the report noted. "To the extent that transparency contributes to the singling out of projects that sound questionable without context . . . transparency might erode rather than strengthen public confidence in the [Recovery Act]."

Also skewing public perceptions are the many organizations that use recovery data to promote their agendas, the report stated. Information services firms package the data in ways that bring in higher sales, while nonprofit interest groups imbue their analyses with their ideologies.

Although the press tries to present objective analyses to help citizens monitor local projects, such investigations should not be a replacement for government-produced breakdowns, the report added.

Craig Jennings, director of fiscal policy at OMB Watch, a government transparency organization, said new rules for calculating the number of jobs created by the stimulus spending that the government issued in December could further confuse Internet users who are trying to understand the stimulus' effects.

Elucidating that will require "reexplaining what a job is. . . . There's going to be questions on how well this is affecting the economy, are we growing [gross domestic product], are we building the infrastructure?" he said. "Hopefully, with the second round of data they'll be able to answer [that] more clearly."

Recovery.gov will debrief users on what the new jobs formula means and how it works, said Recovery Board spokesman Ed Pound.

Conlan said the Obama administration recognizes it needs to make a better effort explaining jobs and projects.

On Dec. 15, Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Board, announced Recovery.gov would improve the presentation of information. Users now can search the map for words contained in award reports such as "transportation" and "energy." Relevant projects pop up on the map for users to click on to get more information. The site also added a jobs summary page that lists the total number of jobs created by agency and by major programs.

The new features will be available in the second round of reports, Pound said, but he could not disclose the specific enhancements.