An article in today's Washington Post by Alec MacGillis details Congressional beefs regarding the lack of information about stimulus spending on the Obama administration's Recovery.gov website when compared to the private sector site Recovery.org, which is using the technique I first suggested in my March 16 blog post this year:
OMB's RAT Board Chairman Earl Devaney has complained that the transparency respecting expenditure of stimulus legislation funds on the Recovery.gov website will require most of his $84 million oversight budget, and over a year to develop. Federal and state agencies can't agree on how much detail should be included in reports on construction projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
I have an idea that won't require creation of a single additional piece of paper. How about assigning a unique identifying number to each individual project funded in whole or in part by these appropriations. Create a database attaching the identifier with the brief project description already included in the front end of every government construction contract. Then, link the identifier to .pdf copies of the contractor's sworn statement and lien waivers already submitted with each monthly pay request on every government construction job.
This way, citizens interested in the progress and efficiency of any particular project could quickly drill down to a complete list of every business that was paid any money for labor or materials on the project. Furthermore, neither the bureaucrats nor the contractors on the project would have to write up a single document they are not already required to prepare. As far as I can tell all this information is already required to be public under the freedom of information laws in every state anyway, so no one's toes get stepped on, and no one has to do any extra work. Just run the sworn statements and lien waivers through a scanner every month and e-mail them to Devaney's folks in Washington, D.C. for electronic insertion into the database. Nobody even has to spend money on stamps. Mission accomplished.
Devaney is defending the failure of Recovery.gov to include more detailed information because, he says, he is "worried about overburdening small businesses," according to the MacGillis newspaper story. Someone with knowledge of public construction contracting practices ought to tell Devaney that all of this information is already required of, and reported by, construction contractors every time they apply for payment on a government project, right down to the names, addresses and amounts paid to every subcontractor and material supplier who gets any money on the job. Without these lien waivers, the general contractor won't get paid. Asking the local or state government agency to scan the lien waivers and sworn statements and e-mail them to Devaney's folks in Washington D.C. would probably require six minutes per month per project out of the busy workday of some government secretary in a state or local agency office. No additional burden is placed on either the contractor or the contracting government agency.
There are no secrets in these pay request packages, and as far as I can tell the documents are already publicly available under the freedom of information laws in every American jurisdiction, so all that is needed is forwarding them to Devaney and his staff, and posting them on Devaney's Recovery.gov website.
The failure of the folks in Washington D.C. to accept this simple truth is utterly astonishing.
OMB's RAT Board Chairman Earl Devaney has complained that the transparency respecting expenditure of stimulus legislation funds on the Recovery.gov website will require most of his $84 million oversight budget, and over a year to develop. Federal and state agencies can't agree on how much detail should be included in reports on construction projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
I have an idea that won't require creation of a single additional piece of paper. How about assigning a unique identifying number to each individual project funded in whole or in part by these appropriations. Create a database attaching the identifier with the brief project description already included in the front end of every government construction contract. Then, link the identifier to .pdf copies of the contractor's sworn statement and lien waivers already submitted with each monthly pay request on every government construction job.
This way, citizens interested in the progress and efficiency of any particular project could quickly drill down to a complete list of every business that was paid any money for labor or materials on the project. Furthermore, neither the bureaucrats nor the contractors on the project would have to write up a single document they are not already required to prepare. As far as I can tell all this information is already required to be public under the freedom of information laws in every state anyway, so no one's toes get stepped on, and no one has to do any extra work. Just run the sworn statements and lien waivers through a scanner every month and e-mail them to Devaney's folks in Washington, D.C. for electronic insertion into the database. Nobody even has to spend money on stamps. Mission accomplished.
Devaney is defending the failure of Recovery.gov to include more detailed information because, he says, he is "worried about overburdening small businesses," according to the MacGillis newspaper story. Someone with knowledge of public construction contracting practices ought to tell Devaney that all of this information is already required of, and reported by, construction contractors every time they apply for payment on a government project, right down to the names, addresses and amounts paid to every subcontractor and material supplier who gets any money on the job. Without these lien waivers, the general contractor won't get paid. Asking the local or state government agency to scan the lien waivers and sworn statements and e-mail them to Devaney's folks in Washington D.C. would probably require six minutes per month per project out of the busy workday of some government secretary in a state or local agency office. No additional burden is placed on either the contractor or the contracting government agency.
There are no secrets in these pay request packages, and as far as I can tell the documents are already publicly available under the freedom of information laws in every American jurisdiction, so all that is needed is forwarding them to Devaney and his staff, and posting them on Devaney's Recovery.gov website.
The failure of the folks in Washington D.C. to accept this simple truth is utterly astonishing.
Here's the story:
