Since 2009, the public has been able to track the outlay of more than $275 billion in federal contracts, grants, and loans as a result of the unprecedented transparency and accountability provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act), part of the federal economic stimulus program.

While there are debates as to whether the Recovery Act saved the economy or not, the one thing that has not been in the headlines was the way federal agency leaders implemented more than 200 programs that were used to distribute the money. 

Historically, spending under stimulus legislation tended to peak after a recession was over, oftentimes creating inflation instead of jobs. To avoid this, the Recovery Act man­dated tight timeframes, with 70 percent of the money required to be spent within 17 months to generate jobs. There was significant concern that this rapid spending might result in an estimated $50 billion in waste, fraud, or abuse. Accordingly, there were stringent transparency and accountability requirements embedded in the law.

President Obama created the Government Accountability and Transparency Board (GAT Board), headed by Earl Devaney, the chair of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (Recovery Board), to recommend ways to apply the successful lessons of how Recovery Act monies were overseen to all government spending.<

One giant step appears to be in the developmental stages right now.

As chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, Earl Devaney reports directly to the vice-president of the United States. He leads a group with the critical task of preventing and detecting waste fraud and mismanagement as well as promoting transparency in matters pertaining to stimulus dollars. The Board itself is made up of a dozen federal Inspectors General.

Last week Recovery.gov unveiled a number of improvements to the website, designed to provide “more transparency and easier accessibility,” as Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney said in a new welcoming video. We browsed around a bit, using the Chairman’s video as a guide. Here were the new features that stood out:

Some good news emerges from the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board's just-released quarterly report to the President and Congress. Many of the data quality problems that emerged in the first reporting period have been corrected, as illustrated in the report's table one, on page five.