Recovery.gov Enhances Downloads

The board overseeing stimulus spending has provided Internet users with a bulk download of all federal contract results, after transparency activists griped that Recovery.gov's data was hard to analyze. The new data set, labeled "AllNationwideContracts.zip," is a single spreadsheet listing the status, location, funds awarded and jobs created for projects across all 50 states.

On Thursday, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board posted on Recovery.gov, the official stimulus-monitoring site, the first batch of spending reports from companies that garnered federal contracts under the 2009 Recovery Act. Users last week had to download separate sets of data for prime recipients and subrecipients and do so for each state to mix and match the stats.

Open government group OMB Watch on Thursday complained that the download options were "extremely convoluted."

On Monday, the organization congratulated the board for rapidly reworking the layout. "This is definitely a good sign that the Board and the Recovery.gov tech team are hearing the transparency community and responding to its concerns," commented Craig Jennings, an OMB Watch senior policy analyst.