Recovery Act: Increasing the Public's Understanding of What Funds Are Being Spent on and What Outcomes Are Expected
Highlights
A hallmark of efforts to implement the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) is to be transparent and accountable about what the money is being spent on and what is being achieved. To help achieve these goals, recipients are to report every 3 months on their award activities and expected outcomes, among other things. This information is available on Recovery.gov, the government's official Recovery Act Web site. As requested, this report covers 11 federal programs focused on broadband, energy, transportation, federal buildings, and civil works activities, representing $67 billion in Recovery Act funding. Primarily, the report (1) describes how the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and federal agencies implemented the act to report funds' uses and (2) assesses the extent to which descriptions of awards meet GAO's transparency criteria. It also describes reported uses of funds for the 11 programs. GAO reviewed requirements for reporting in the act and OMB's guidance. Based on these requirements, GAO developed a transparency assessment and applied it to a probability sample of descriptions from 14,089 recipient reports. In addition, GAO reviewed 52 projects in detail in states that it had contacted as part of its bimonthly reviews and interviewed federal, state, and local officials about their experiences with reporting descriptions of awards.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Office of Management and Budget | To further the goals of public understanding of what Recovery Act funds are being spent on and what results are expected, the Director, Office of Management and Budget, should revise OMB's recipient reporting guidance, including the Recipient Reporting Data Model, to provide recipients with clearer general instructions and examples for narrative fields aimed at fostering more complete information on the uses of funds and expected outcomes. |
A hallmark of efforts to implement the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was to be transparent and accountable about what the money was spent on and what was achieved. To help realize these goals, recipients of Recovery Act awards were required to report information on each award such as cost, location, and a description of the activities to be carried out every 3 months. This reported information was made available on the government's official Recovery Act Web site, Recovery.gov. In 2010, we assessed a probability sample of award descriptions for nine Recovery Act programs against transparency criteria we developed based on the Recovery Act and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, among other sources. We found that about a quarter of the recipient-reported descriptions met the transparency criteria while the remaining three-quarters of the descriptions lacked at least some important information, potentially hampering understanding of what was being achieved with Recovery Act funding. We recommended that the Director of OMB revise its recipient reporting guidance, including the Recipient Reporting Data Model, to provide recipients with clearer general instructions and examples for narrative fields aimed at fostering more complete information on the uses of funds and expected outcomes. In September 2014, we confirmed that OMB issued guidance in September 2010 to recipients and federal agencies to improve the transparency of narrative descriptions. OMB concurrently updated its Recipient Reporting Data model with improved examples and clarifying the instructions for some narrative fields including the award description field. By taking these steps, OMB helped ensure the transparency of narrative award descriptions on Recovery.gov, a key mechanism through which the public could understand how their tax dollars were spent and what was achieved from these expenditures
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| Office of Management and Budget | To further the goals of public understanding of what Recovery Act funds are being spent on and what results are expected, the Director, Office of Management and Budget, should work with executive departments and agencies to determine (1) whether supplemental guidance is needed to meet, in a reasonable and cost-effective way, the intent of the Recovery Act for reporting on projects and activities and (2) whether that supplemental guidance or other agency-proposed technical assistance dealing with narrative descriptions of awards provides for transparent descriptions of funded activities. |
The Recovery Act was passed over 8 years ago. Recovery.gov-the website that described how recipients used Recovery Act grants and loans and the outcomes of this use (e.g., jobs created)-are no longer hosted, and the vast majority of Recovery Act funds have been expended. Therefore, this recommendation can no longer be implemented. GAO is closing it as not implemented.
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| Office of Management and Budget | To further the goals of public understanding of what Recovery Act funds are being spent on and what results are expected, the Director, Office of Management and Budget, should periodically (1) review, in partnership with executive departments and agencies, the descriptions of awards--in particular, the narrative fields--submitted by recipients to determine whether the information provides a basic understanding of the uses of the funds and the expected outcomes, and, if not, determine what actions to take, including encouraging agencies to develop or improve program-specific guidance and (2) work with the Recovery Board on the board's assessments of departments' and agencies' data quality reviews to ensure the adequacy of these reviews and further reinforce actions to meet transparency goals. |
Recovery.gov-the website that hosts descriptions of awards-is no longer hosted. Further, the Recovery Board, who GAO direct OMB to work with in the second part of this recommendation, has long since been dissolved. As a result, OMB can no longer take action on this recommendation, and GAO is closing it as not implemented.
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