By Marc Gunther
GreemBiz News
June 24, 2009
There are two places on the Internet where you can find out how the $787-billion stimulus package is being spent. One is run by the federal government. The other by a West Coast tech company. Care to guess which does a better job?
Yes, it's recovery.org, which despite its dot-org suffix, is run by a company called Onvia (Nasdaq: ONVI) based in Seattle, which is tracking thousands of stimulus projects at the state, county and local level, from building a transit center in Washtenaw, Michigan, to decommissioning nuclear facilities in South Carolina.
Then there's recovery.gov, the federal site that "offers little beyond news releases, general breakdowns of spending, and acronym-laden spreadsheets and timelines," as the Washington Post put it. But don't worry, the government is on the case. An office set up to oversee the stimulus (with a budget of $84 million) has about 30 employees, plus outside contractors, working to revamp the site, the newspaper said. "We have four and a half years to turn this thing into its final product," Earl E. Devaney, the former inspector general now in charge of oversight, told The Post. No, I'm not making this up.
To be sure, recovery.org and recovery.gov have different purposes. While the government side is designed for taxpayers, and intended to provide oversight of stimulus outlays, the Onvia-built site is primarily intended for small, mid-sized and big companies that want a shot at government contracts. That's been Onvia's business since it was founded in 1995...
Click on Title above to visit Recovery.org site
