Recipient Data Coming Soon but Concerns Linger

Members of the STAR Coalition are not the only ones worried about the quality of the data that will be made public next month when ARRA recipient reporting commences. A report issued last week by the Government Accountability Office also expresses significant concerns. The GAO writes on page 111:

This recipient reporting is intended to provide the public with an unprecedented level of transparency into how federal dollars are being spent and help drive accountability for the timely, prudent, and effective spending of recovery dollars. However, significant risks exist that will likely negatively impact the completeness, accuracy, and reliability of the information reported in the initial round of Section 1512 reporting. First, the reporting requirements are new, and many recipients who will be required to report information have never been required to report such information in the past. Recipients' systems and processes have not previously been set up to provide reliable and accurate data for the currently required reporting, and recipients may not have sufficient personnel with the skills needed to provide assurance over the quality of the recipient reporting. The large number of recipients also adds to this risk, as it is difficult for states and the federal government to monitor data quality coming from the recipients. Data quality issues impact the usefulness and reliability of the summarized information at the state and federal levels.

And this does not even cover the points we in the STAR Coalition and the Coalition for An Accountable Recovery have made about the inadequate procedures for collecting data on all levels of subrecipients and the likely absence of data on job quality and the demographics of jobholders.

GAO does point out that federal and state agencies seem to be working hard to address ambiguities in the given reporting framework. And it notes (page 113) that Florida, for instance, decided to do data submission "dry runs" with the Office of Management and Budget.

Yet it is surprising to learn that states are taking very different approaches in structuring their recipient reporting system. GAO discloses (pages 113-114) that, among the 17 states (including the District of Columbia) it is monitoring, 12 have decided to centralize the reporting and five are taking a decentralized approach. For states in the first group (AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, IA, IL, MA, MI, NC, OH, PA) prime recipients, including state departments, will all send their data to a state reporting hub, which in turn will forward it to the feds. In the other states (GA, MS, NJ, NY, TX), the recipients will report directly to FederalReporting.gov.

To make things more complicated, some of the states using the centralized approach (e.g., Michigan) are using existing systems to collect the data, while others (e.g., Florida) are creating new systems.

Meanwhile, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has revamped the Recovery.gov website to accommodate the forthcoming recipient data. For now, it has an interactive map that shows the location of entities receiving ARRA contracts, grants and loans; it is based on reporting by federal agencies. You can display a state map with dots representing recipient locations or zoom in by zip code. In both cases the dots can be clicked for a bit more detail. There is, however, no information on jobs or details on contractors and subcontractors, which will presumably come with the recipient reporting.

We've got a decent framework. Now we need good data to plug into it.