Reporting requirements for the Recovery Act have been ballyhooed as setting new standards for government transparency. About a year ago, Vice President Joseph Biden introduced a now familiar feature: interactive maps which show the way stimulus dollars move to states, grantees, contractors, etc. The vice president proclaimed, "Unprecedented transparency has been one of the hallmarks of our implementation of the Recovery Act. I applaud the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board for taking advantage of the latest technology to provide the American people with an unprecedented look at their taxpayer dollars at work creating jobs and boosting the economy."

Still, while technology like that used for the Recovery Act can be hugely helpful, it’s only a tool. Ten years ago, when we were working on a documentary about Walt Disney, we interviewed John Lasseter (photo at left), now chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney animated studios and the father of such films as Toy Story. "Walt was a proponent of developing new technology to apply to the films, to keep pushing the art form, but it's always in service of the story. The story was everything," he told us. "I got really caught up in new technology but from the very beginning I knew that this technology was not going to entertain audiences alone. Technology should be in the service of the story. It's not the technology that entertains audiences. It's story and characters."

What do Lasseter’s comments have to do with Recovery Act reporting? Consider a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office: "Increasing the Public's Understanding of What Funds are Being Spent on and What Outcomes are Expected." It found this: While there may be lots of numbers in the Recovery Act project descriptions, narrative about the specific projects is frequently missing in action. "We estimate that about a quarter of the awards on Recovery.gov for the nine programs we reviewed . . . .had sufficiently clear and understandable information on the award's purpose, scope, location, cost, nature of activities, outcome and status of work," GAO investigators wrote.

Of the project areas that GAO examined, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program did the best, with 57 percent of the examined awards meeting GAO's transparency criteria and 43 percent partially meeting them. For High Speed Rail, 20 percent of projects met the transparency criteria, 20 percent partially met the criteria and 60 percent did not. The results for the Weatherization Assistance Program were also at the low end, with 12 percent meeting the criteria, 71 percent partially meeting them and 18 percent in the lowest "Did not meet" category.

The types of reports the GAO found wanting were often similar to this one from the Michigan Department of Transportation. The project name is “Single Course Chip Seal.” And how is the project described? "To improve the transportation infrastructure and the economic development capacity of the State." Not much of a story there.