Where's the Waste?

In the past two years, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has won plaudits for its efforts to to track and report on economic stimulus funds. But its leaders clearly think they can do even better.

In connection with the National Academy of Public Administration (full disclosure: I'm a fellow of the academy), the board is hosting an online dialogue from Oct. 17 to Oct. 24 to solicit ideas on how to futher improve the process of detecting waste, fraud and abuse in Recovery Act spending.

Specifically, participants can submit, discuss and vote on ideas related to management, data sources, technologies, risk models and performance metrics. While the dialogue is centered on recovery-related spending, organizers say they're interested in ideas related to oversight of all federal spending to see how they might apply to keeping an eye on stimulus funds.

NAPA will conduct an in-depth analysis of the ideas surfaced in the dialogue to identify the most promising techniques and technologies.

Click here to join the discussion.