Convenient Transparency

By Robert Brodsky

The fine bloggers at OMB Watch raise an interesting question for the administration and for the folks running Recovery.gov . For months, the administration has been pressing the brakes on the amount of spending data that will be immediately put up on the site, noting that Recovery Act recipient data will not flood into the government until October.

That all made sense until Wednesday when, to celebrate the first 100 days of the Recovery Act, the Vice President's office released a report highlighting 100 projects throughout the country funded using the stimulus. These project "snapshots" include information on funding recipients, contract amount and a cursorily examination of the project. In other words, exactly the information that the administration promised will be available on Recovery.gov.

"So which is it?" writes OMB Watch's Sam Rosen-Amy . "Does the Administration have the data or do they not have the data? It doesn't seem likely that they are waiting for all the information before filing a report, since USAspending.gov is apparently already releasing information on some Recovery contracts (none of which are in the 100 Days report, though). So what's going on? Things like this 100 Days report don't give us a lot of confidence that the Administration is moving as fast as possible to release Recovery Act information as soon as it is available, or even that everyone in the Administration is on the same page. Sadly, this document, which was supposed to be an effort at transparency and accountability, only highlights how much more information we need about the Recovery."

He has a point. The administration seems to want it both ways with transparency. They want to cherry pick the spending projects that show the early success of the stimulus but doesn't seem in any hurry want to put it in a format - and in a location - where the general public goes for constant updates about the Recovery Act.

And, if the concern is that Recovery.gov is not capable of displaying the data in the format they envision, then put the information the government has already collected in a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Something, anything, is better than nothing. As Obama frequently says, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."