For the last few months, the federal government’s stimulus-tracking Web site has been attacked by critics who argued that a private sector effort by Onvia called recovery.org has been doing a better job.
With a relaunch this week of the official www.recovery.gov site, the Feds are now competitive again. The new Web site features an easy-to-use map that lets you zoom in and click on green, blue, and pink dots that represent where contracts, grants, and loans from the $787 billion stimulus legislation are ending up.
One of the interesting things to note is that grants spending is more than 11 times greater than contracts spending. As of September 19th, there has been $12 billion in contracts and over $141 billion in loans, all directly from recovery funds. The spending isn’t slowing down either. There have also been over 17,000 new solicitations posted in the last 30 days alone.