Policy on Fixing Reports Reversed

The board overseeing stimulus spending, acknowledging inaccuracies in job-creation data, has reversed a policy barring recovery fund recipients from fixing mistakes after reports are due, board officials announced on Tuesday.

Current White House guidance only allows stimulus recipients to correct errors during a 20-day window after quarterly reports are due. The change, which takes effect Jan. 1, will permit governments, companies, nonprofits, universities and other recipients to alter their submissions continuously on FederalReporting.gov, a password-protected inbox for reports.

The White House and the independent Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board agreed to the new policy to improve the quality of data that is intended to offer the public a transparent view of Recovery Act results.

"In October, for the first time, we posted the raw data from recipients of federal contracts, grants and loans on our Web site, Recovery.gov, and there were recipient mistakes -- plenty of them," board chairman Earl Devaney stated in a post on Recovery.gov. "We expected problems, and have been developing technical and content changes to help improve the quality of recipient data and streamline the reporting process for the January reporting period."

The first round of reports, which were due in October, covered the period between the February 2009 enactment of the law and Sept. 30. Reports will now be collected quarterly, starting in January.

Devaney also announced technical changes to FederalReporting.gov that automatically will address some notorious errors that arose during the first reporting period. Many recipients entered the wrong congressional district in their reports, leading some Recovery.gov users to believe stimulus money had vanished into "phantom" districts. Now, FederalReporting.gov, using an internal algorithm, will check to make sure a recipient's district matches the Zip Code entered. If the two don't correspond, the system will not accept the report until the recipient enters the correct congressional district.

Other common goofs: recipients reported spending more money than they actually received, or finishing a project without receiving any money yet. The system now can scan for these kinds of errors and will prevent recipients from transmitting their reports until they type the correct information.

Separately, the White House will work with recipients and federal agencies to clarify nontechnical reporting issues, such as confusion over how to calculate the number of jobs created.