GSA issues presolicitation to overhaul Recovery.gov

The General Services Administration issued a presolicitation on Thursday to overhaul the federal Web site dedicated to tracking stimulus spending, with a request for proposals expected to be released on Monday. Only vendors on GSA's Alliant contract will be eligible to submit proposals.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees Recovery.gov, wants to hire a contractor to overhaul the site, which GSA currently maintains, a board spokesman announced on June 1. GSA officials did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

"RATB is seeking an innovative, award winning, Web-design and implementation firm with expertise on user-focused, data-driven Web designs to perform complete redesign, implementation, and operation of the Recovery.gov version 2.0 Web site," the presolicitation stated. "Design services will include visual design, user interface design, information architecture, design engineering, project management, and all expertise required to deliver a Web site with interactive data visualization, and Web application-level functionality."

In the past, the board said the site should allow regular citizens to quickly and easily track where stimulus dollars are spent in their neighborhoods. The presolicitation specifies that the site should be capable of analyzing and visualizing large amounts of complex data, with the ability to automate data collection and replication functions.

GSA is expected to issue a request for proposals on Monday with bids due around June 26. Only the 59 vendors on GSA's Alliant contract will be eligible to bid. Recovery.gov must be operational by Oct. 10, when Recovery Act recipients are required to file their first full spending reports. The board has expressed optimism about meeting that deadline.

"We want to get [Recovery.gov] in really good shape by Oct. 10," said Ed Pound, a spokesman for the board. "That's when the states and other recipients will start sending reports. Very soon after that, in the same month, we'll be posting this stuff and we want to be able to handle it."

Open government advocates have criticized Recovery.gov's data offerings as underwhelming, and the site has faced competition from private sector Web sites that track stimulus spending. "A lot of the information [on Recovery.gov] is difficult to digest and put together in an aggregated way," said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at FedSources.

Some critics have questioned whether the government should be focused on how to present and visualize the data as opposed to simply providing raw data feeds that the public can manipulate and organize.

Earl Devaney, former Interior Department inspector general in charge of the recovery board, told Government Executive in April that he hoped to have a contract to redesign the site by June 1.

The recovery board still hasn't explained how Recovery.gov will be different from USASpending.gov, a Web site that provides data on government grants and contracts, according to a source familiar with the recovery program. In a May 19 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., recommended USASpending be used to track stimulus projects until Recovery.gov is operational.

"USASpending is mostly contracts," Pound said. "Here's what we're trying to do: We want the American public to be able to dig deep on this thing. We're going to have a mapping component that I think is going to be very good. We're not there yet, but we're trying to get there. ... The board's view on this [is] they want this to be something really transparent with accountability there, so people can get in and see what's going on in their communities."

The board would like Recovery.gov to provide functionalities beyond those of USASpending, which was developed for about $700,000 in 2007, the source said. The re-design of Recovery.gov is expected to cost at least 10 times that amount, although Bjorklund said the figure is not unusually high, given the likely database requirements of the project.