—Gary Bass, OMB Watch
For the first time ever, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act creates timely, direct reporting by recipients and subrecipients of Recovery Act funds. This panel will focus on the opportunities and challenges this new reporting creates for presenting data about whether the Recovery Act is accomplishing its purposes. There will be discussion (and demonstration) of a new project to overlay federal spending information with needs and performance data with a special focus on equity issues. The tools created under this new project can help policy makers improve decision-making about allocation of federal funds. They can also empower the public to hold its government more accountable and create new ways to assess performance. This panel will also include a discussion about Recovery Act data quality and gaps in collection of information. Finally, the panel will propose a new model for collecting and disseminating fiscal information beyond the Recovery Act to create a more transparent and accountable government.