Recovery board grants stimulus reporting extension

The board overseeing stimulus spending has granted fund recipients a reprieve to report on the progress of projects and job creation, officials at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board said on Monday.

The board on Saturday made the decision to push back the Oct. 10 reporting deadline issued by the Office of Management and Budget and mandated under the Recovery Act.

Board officials said the grace period, which ends on Oct. 20, will not delay the posting of data on Recovery.gov. Currently, state and local governments, contractors, universities and nonprofits receiving awards are transmitting reports on their Recovery-funded work through FederalReporting.gov, a password-protected database. The details they are submitting include the location of projects, funds received, project status and jobs created.

"We felt we had the leeway to do this given the problems we were encountering [with] technical issues -- and this was the first time for people who were filing these reports," board spokesman Ed Pound said, referring to user difficulties. "This is all in the interest of transparency and getting the fullest picture possible . . . we want to make sure we get it right."

The technical issues alluded to involve the way FederalReporting.gov is configured to accept incoming reports. The system originally was constructed to receive information from a single point of contact. But contractors had to change the system's setup when board members on Aug. 19 discovered some states were gathering bulk packages of data from all their agencies, such as state education and transportation departments. FederalReporting.gov has since been reconfigured to take in centralized reports from state governments representing multiple programs, as well as reports from individual agencies.

FederalReporting.gov now states, "since this is the first time that recipients are submitting data reports and some states are encountering technical challenges in filing bulk reports for their recipients, FederalReporting.gov will remain open for reporting until Oct. 20."

The Recovery Act stipulates that "not later than 10 days after the end of each calendar quarter each recipient that received Recovery funds from a federal agency shall submit a report to that agency." OMB guidelines also dictate that state and local governments, contractors, universities and nonprofits receiving awards must report on their activities no later than Oct. 10.

Pound noted that recipients who do not file by Oct. 10 must provide an explanation for the delay and will be identified on Recovery.gov so the public knows who filed late. The postponement will not push back disclosures on Recovery.gov, he added. Stimulus results from the private sector, nonprofits and states will appear on Oct. 30. A small slice of spending reports, just from recipients under direct contract with the federal government, will post on Thursday.

OMB officials said they support the board's decision. "The goal of the recipient reporting is to provide as much insight and transparency as possible into the use of recovery dollars at the local level," OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said. "The extension is another example of the administration's commitment to bend over backwards to provide unprecedented transparency into the impact of the Recovery Act."