Federal Eye: Eye Opener: A look at the new USASpending.gov

Happy Tuesday! The Obama administration will soon relaunch USASpending.gov, the government Web site that lets taxpayers track how federal dollars are spent each
year.

Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra gave The Eye a sneak peak at the new site on Monday (see screengrabs above and below).
The Office of Management and Budget
has worked on the site for the last year, continues to make tweaks and
will soon announce a formal launch date.

USASpending.gov first launched in Dec. 2007, after Congress approved a contracting reform
measure sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Tom
Coburn (R-Okla.). Transparency advocates and good government
groups hailed it as a giant step in improving access to government
spending information. But it’s still not fulfilling all of the
requirements in the Obama-Coburn bill, according to a Government
Accountability Office report released this month.

Most notably, the site doesn’t provide information on how subcontractors are spending federal dollars, GAO said. Several agencies
also failed to report fiscal 2009 spending data and OMB doesn’t enforce
the law. Sen. Coburn is expected to raise similar concerns during a
Senate hearing on government transparency this afternoon, aides
said.

Those concerns may dissipate however when the new site launches. It will report subcontractor information and OMB is working with agencies
on identifying the officials responsible for ensuring that spending
information gets reported accurately and on time.

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