The Recovery Accountability and Transparency board has posted the first batch of recipient reporting data on Recovery.gov.
A little background for those of you who don’t follow the stimulus bill quite as obsessively as we do:
Recovery.gov already had agency reporting data, which comes directly from the agencies that awarded the money. But the recipients of that money are also required to report, on a quarterly basis, on each contract, grant or loan they receive. The first round of reporting ended on Oct. 10, and the RAT board has staretd posting that data online.
This data — in theory — is more detailed than the agency-reported data; it also enumerates the number of jobs created or saved by each project.
One big caveat: This first round of data only covers contracts awarded using stimulus money, not grants or loans. Contracts represent roughly $16 billion in spending, or less than 10 percent of the total stimulus money awarded to date. The grant/loan data should be available by Oct. 30.
So be careful about jumping to any conclusions based on this data — it’s a small fraction of the total stimulus spending.