Pressrelease.gov?

Yesterday, I expressed hope that Recovery.gov, the Administration's planned stimulus-tracking site, would employ some minimal level of collaborative functionality to actually engage people in tracking the funds dispersed under ARRA. Today, the site has already gone live (evidently the White House New Media team isn't functioning on Mountain Time), and via Twitter, Slate's John Dickerson has the first review:

Continuing the administration's effort to break new ground in revitalizing the press release, they have launched www.recovery.gov

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to sort-of agree. The site does have some cool features, such as a map of (estimated) saved jobs and a front-page timeline of milestones. As I said yesterday, this stuff isn't trivial. Explaining what's actually in a multi-hundred-page bill that contains lines like "subparagraph (E) of section 34(a)(1) of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 (15 U.S.C. 2229a(a)(1)(E)) shall not apply with respect to funds appropriated in this or any other Act making appropriations for fiscal year 2009 or 2010 for grants under such section 34" is a legitimately useful public service, and a nod towards the fact that citizen participation requires a citizenry that can figure out what on earth you're doing. That said, in terms of actually engaging citizens in the economic recovery, I think it's a missed opportunity.

UPDATE: Micah Sifry has more on what is and isn't missing on Recovery.gov. My favorite:

Data. Data. Data. Of course, with the act three hours old, there just isn't much yet. That said, whether Recovery.gov will give open-government advocates the raw data that they're hungering for is still an open question. The site is, thus far, populated by the shiny consumer-end charts. A that's good start, but no replacement, advocates say, for raw XML data then can then use for mash-ups and number crunching.