The Government Accountability Office, in its assessment of jobs data reported by stimulus fund recipients and posted to the administration’s Recovery.gov site, said that considering “the national scale of the recipient reporting exercise and the limited time frames in which it was implemented, the ability of the reporting mechanism to handle the volume of data from a wide variety of recipients represents a solid first step in moving toward more transparency and accountability for federal funds.”

However, GAO’s analysis of the data found “a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed.” Examples of “erroneous or questionable data entries” found in GAO’s review:

(1) 3,978 reports that showed no dollar amount received or expended but included more than 50,000 jobs created or retained;
(2) 9,247 reports that showed no jobs but included expended amounts approaching $1 billion, and
(3) Instances of other reporting anomalies such as discrepancies between award amounts and the amounts reported as received which, although relatively small in number, indicate problematic issues in the reporting.

The report also said that “questions remain” about the 10 percent of recipients who failed to file reports by the October 30 deadline, and that full-time equivalent (FTE) calculations “were reported inconsistently even though significant guidance and training was provided by OMB and federal agencies.”

“While recipients in the states we reviewed generally made good faith efforts to report accurately, there is evidence, including numerous media accounts, that the data reporting has been somewhat inconsistent,” the report said. “Even recipients of similar types of funds appear to have interpreted the reporting guidance in somewhat different ways and took different approaches in how they developed their jobs data.”

The GAO also noted that while the recipient reports “do provide a real-time window on the results of Recovery Act spending,” the employment impact of the stimulus bill could not be measured on the basis of the recipient reported data alone:

“Even if the data quality issues are resolved, it is important to recognize that the FTEs in recipient reports alone do not reflect the total employment effects of the Recovery Act. As noted, these reports solely reflect direct employment arising from the expenditure of less than one-third of Recovery Act funds. Therefore, both the data reported by recipients and other macroeconomic data and methods are necessary to gauge the overall employment effects of the stimulus. The Recovery Act includes entitlements and tax provisions, which also have employment effects. The employment effects in any state will vary with labor market stress and fiscal condition, as discussed in this report.”

The GAO provides a valuable site covering its considerable responsibilities for oversight of the stimulus bill, including a subsection covering reported jobs data.

As part of its Eye on the Stimulus coverage, ProPublica has prepared a pair of FAQs to help users with the “daunting task” of navigating the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov site, launched as a transparency measure to let the public track stimulus spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In its first FAQ, ProPublica explains how to search for stimulus spending by recipient and by state, along with tips for interpreting data on job reporting. The second FAQ explains the difference between “recipient reported” and “agency reported” data, how to interpret different dollar measures like “outlays” and “obligations,” and how to search by ZIP code.

ProPublica’s efforts to guide users through the recovery site data earned a recommendation from OMB Watch, a partner in the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery, which said that although “access to the recipient reports is great (and rather historic),” searching the recovery site is “tedious” and the site’s help section “isn’t very helpful.” A week earlier, OMB Watch wrote about why the jobs count on Recovery.gov is an “unreliable indicator of the Recovery Act’s success, not only because its calculation is less than scientific, but also because it is just one component of the act’s impact on employment and lives of people in need.”

More recently, ABC News reported that the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, at the urging of the Office of Management and Budget, removed data on 60,000 jobs before the October 30 release of recipient reported data because, the Board said (pdf, 71kb), data on those jobs provided by recovery fund recipients “contained unrealistic data, including, but not limited to, unrealistic job data.”

The White House responded in a blog post to criticisms about that incident, as well as inaccuracies that did make it into the October 30 release, such as a report on jobs created in the non-existent 15th Congressional district in Arizona. “We fully agree with those who find the mistakes in the data frustrating – and we’ve been working with the Recovery Board to find the mistakes, and fix them,” wrote an administration official. But expectations that the data would be free of errors are “not realistic when 130,000 reports are being filed in a 10 day period,” and those errors shouldn’t obscure the transparency milestone the site has achieved: “What government program has ever even attempted to provide this sort of information, on this scale, this quickly?”

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board issued its first release of data from recipients of stimulus bill funds on October 15. About a third of the stimulus spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted in February comes in the form of contracts, grants, and loans. The bill requires recipients of these funds to file reports on how the funds were used. The data indicated that a total of about 30,000 jobs were created or saved by the contracts reported in the release.

The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR) praised the transparency steps taken under the Recovery Act but said the reporting tools employed in the first data release need to be improved. Gary Bass, executive director of coalition partner OMB Watch, said in a press release that the Recovery Act “is proving to be the most transparent federal spending law ever enacted… It is a watershed because the Obama administration has successfully created a new reporting system that requires recipients of Recovery Act funds to report in a timely manner how they are using federal resources. Unfortunately, the Recovery.gov website is an ineffective and inadequate tool for understanding the very small share of Recovery Act dollars reported today.”

The CAR release cited a raft of problems in the first data release, including inadequate search and download functionality, data quality problems, troublesome navigation, and poor explanation. “While acknowledging the significant precedent set by today’s data release, the Coalition expects significant improvements will be made to the Recovery.gov website before the recipient data about grants and loans are released on Oct. 30.”

In a preview (pdf, 60kb) of the October 15 release posted earlier in the week, CAR explained that the first release of data “equals only a tiny sliver of the total funds expended during the first quarter of the Act. So whatever jobs figures come out will also undoubtedly be a tiny sliver of the Recovery Act’s total jobs impact. The recipient reporting data that will be published on Recovery.gov will only cover spending on grants, contracts and loans. Recipient reports for the other spending categories – entitlements and tax breaks – are not required.” The preview said the scope of data reported on October 30 “will be far broader and more representative.”

Rural counties with high-speed Internet access have benefited from stronger economic and employment growth, according to a Department of Agriculture study. The USDA’s report, Broadband Internet’s Value for Rural America, said that in counties that had broadband access by 2000, “employment growth was higher and nonfarm private earnings greater” than in comparable counties with little or no broadband access.

Broadband allows rural areas to compete for service sector jobs, where most of the employment growth over the last several decades has occurred, the report said. But broadband access remains more limited in rural areas: “70 percent of rural households with in-home Internet access had a broadband connection in 2007, compared with 84 percent of urban households,” according to the study.

“Despite significant expansion, the metro-nonmetro gap in the number of broadband providers remains and has even widened by some measures since 2000, when broadband provision was much more limited in scope. It is not surprising that, as broadband access has expanded to encompass a large majority of Americans, the remaining areas of limited coverage increasingly reflect the higher costs associated with providing service to smaller populations.”

The report pointed to government initiatives aimed at expanding rural access to broadband, including the 2008 Farm Act (Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008), which “reauthorized USDA’s telemedicine, distance learning, and rural broadband access grant and loan programs,” and this year’s stimulus bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), which included $2.5 billion for USDA loans and grants to increase rural broadband availability. “As much as these funds address the needs of unserved and underserved communities, rural broadband availability will increase,” the report said.

The Treasury Department paid out about $29 billion in stimulus funds to states and localities as of June, or roughly 60 percent of the $49 billion projected for use in states and localities for the current fiscal year ending September 30. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported the figures in its second bimonthly review of selected states’ and localities’ use of funds provided to them under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act).

Of that $29 billion, “more than 90 percent … has been provided through the increased Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) grant awards and the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund administered by the Department of Education,” the report said.

GAO provides a web page with complete information on its Recovery Act oversight, including specific state-by-state information compiled for the bimonthly reviews. The reviews focus on 16 states and the District of Columbia, which, according to GAO, “contain about 65 percent of the US population and are estimated to receive about two-thirds of the intergovernmental federal assistance available through the Recovery Act.”

GAO’s Twitter followers found out about the report via this tweet on one of GAO’s new Twitter feeds. GAO, which has been using Twitter to spread the word on its activities since April, sent out a press release on July 7 to publicize its Twitter feeds and YouTube channel. GAO maintains separate Twitter feeds for its reports and testimony and for its legal products.

NextGov.com has assembled a federal government Twitter feed so you can follow “what government is twittering now.”

The Congressional Research Service has prepared a list of resources for members of Congress that is “designed to assist in responding to a broad range of constituent questions and concerns about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).” The February 26 guide, titled Authoritative Resources on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and available from Open CRS, includes links to online resources provided by the White House, federal agencies, state governments, and the United States Conference of Mayors. (Note that the links are live, although the text is all black.) It also links to a House Ways and Means Committee web page with information about some of the bill’s tax provisions and instructions for applying for benefits provided under the bill.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is asking for help from the public to uncover any improper activities in the use of funds from the $787 billion stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In an appeal on March 30 (pdf, 120kb), the agency urged “private citizens, government workers, contractors, and others to report waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement of those funds” to FraudNET, the fraud reporting service launched by GAO in 1979. In a reprise of GAO’s March 5 testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro warned in the appeal that “the risk of fraud and abuse grows when large sums are spent quickly, eligibility requirements are being established or changed, and new programs created.”

The Recovery Act assigned GAO with substantial responsibilities for oversight of the bill, including bimonthly reviews to track how the funds are being spent and whether they are achieving the goals of the legislation. The first bimonthly review is due in April.

When the State of California launched www.recovery.ca.gov on March 13 to provide information about how the state will spend its share of funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, it joined a growing list of government bodies that have gone online to provide information and accountability under the new law. The National Conference of State Legislatures is tracking how each state monitors and reports on its use of ARRA funds, including recovery.illinois.gov launched by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.

Since this blog first highlighted some of the resources available about the law soon after it was signed in February, new and notable sources of information have continued to appear. Jefferson County Public Library in Lakewood, Colorado posted a handy and thorough list of resources on the financial crisis, including information about the Recovery Act from both government and the press. The American Library Association is keeping the library community up to date on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 101, which provides information about ARRA of particular importance to libraries, including a list of “what librarians should know about ARRA.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Illinois is one of 16 states it will monitor closely to make sure ARRA funds are being spent properly and effectively. Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in testimony on March 5 (pdf, 188kb): “Experience tells us that the risk for fraud and abuse grows when billions of dollars are going out quickly, eligibility requirements are being established or changed, and new programs are being created. This suggests the need for a risk-based approach for targeting attention on specific programs and funding structures early on based on known strengths, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses such as a track record of improper payments or contracting problems.” GAO’s summary of that testimony said that ARRA gives GAO “an important set of responsibilities” for oversight of the law, including “bimonthly reviews of selected states’ and localities’ uses of the Recovery Act funds” to “examine how funds are being used and achieving the stated purposes of the Recovery Act.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, also known as the stimulus bill or the Recovery Act, touches an extremely broad range of government programs — a range that is reflected in the amount of government information about the legislation available online. Here is a sampling:

The complete text of the 407-page bill is available from the Government Printing Office. The February 13 roll call votes are available for the House and Senate votes on the bill.

The White House posted comments made by President Obama at the February 17 signing ceremony in Denver, and a page for citizens to send their comments about the bill. The White House also launched a new website, recovery.gov, that “lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summarized the bill on her blog, The Gavel. Her post links to information about several of the bill’s features and includes video of floor statements made by several members of the House. The Democratic Policy Committee posted its analysis of the bill, including a series of state-by-state fact sheets on the likely impact of the bill.

On the Republican side, there are two posts on the website of the House Republican Conference, GPO.gov, from the same day as the House and Senate votes — one about an Associated Press story and another from the Washington Times — questioning the bill’s likely effectiveness.

On the same day, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) posted its $787 billion cost estimate of the conference agreement on the bill to its Director’s Blog.

The Department of Education posted a summary of the legislation which links to a fact sheet about education funding contained in the act as well as to tables with preliminary estimates of state allocations and Title I grants under the act, and the House Committee on Education and Labor created a web page which links to estimates of state level education funding data prepared by the Congressional Research Service.

The Labor Department posted information explaining the 65% reduction in COBRA premiums the act provides to certain beneficiaries.

The Internal Revenue Service is providing news about the measure’s tax implications, and the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund has information about $3 billion the act provides for the New Markets Tax Credit Program.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a page devoted to implementation of $7.22 billion in programs to be administered by EPA under the act, and the Energy Department has summarized the $16.8 billion the bill provides to the Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The Energy Department’s Western Area Power Administration posted information on its charge under Section 402 of the act to develop transmission capacity for renewable energy in the West.

The Corporation for National and Community Service posted a statement from its acting CEO and a summary of the $201 million made available to its programs, including VISTA and AmeriCorps.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is developing a web page to cover its use of the $610 million in funding it will receive under the act, including work on the “security and interoperability of electronic medical records” and on “a comprehensive framework for a nationwide, fully interoperable smart grid for the U.S. electric power system.”

The State Department posted a breakdown of the $610 million it will receive to fund activities including the rehabilitation of flood control levees.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced that the state is establishing recovery.illinois.gov to provide information about the act “so that every deserving project in Illinois can capture and use its fair share of federal stimulus funds.”

The cost of the economic stimulus bill would rise to approximately $884 billion if enacted as amended in the Senate (pdf, 1.3mb) under a proposal by Senators Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Max Baucus (D-MT), according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate (pdf, 193kb). That figure is $64 billion higher than CBO’s estimate of the cost of the version of the bill passed by the House on January 28 (see second update).

A provision in the Senate amendment to raise the exemption amount allowed against an individual’s income for the alternative minimum tax would reduce revenues by about $70 billion and “account for much of the difference between the 11-year total for the House version and the corresponding total over the same period… for the Inouye-Baucus substitute,” according to the estimate.

About $694 billion of the funding in the Senate proposal, or 78 percent of the total package – $374 billion in outlays and $320 billion in tax cuts – would be spent by the end of fiscal year 2010, according to the figures in CBO’s estimate. In CBO’s earlier estimate of the bill passed by the House, about 64 percent of the funding would be spent by that time.