Website Beats Government’s for Locating Stimulus Money

The site’s popularity is a back story in itself.

While touting the Administration's website for tracking economic stimulus spending, Vice President Biden recently made a common Internet faux pas when he accidentally directed people to www.recovery.org instead of the federal www.recovery.gov.

The upside of the slip-up is that unlike the government’s site, the privately run recovery.org provided much more detailed information about how the $787 billion in stimulus money is being spent.
Three months after the stimulus bill was signed, the government’s website offers little more than news releases, general spending breakdowns, and acronym-laden spreadsheets and timelines.
However recovery.org is mapping every stimulus-related contract it can find on the site, where visitors can search by state or county. For example, a visitor looking for what's going on in Virginia can find nearly 150 specific stimulus projects that have been posted for bids in that state. The government’s site lists only the general program-by-program allocations.

Information USA founder and government money expert Matthew Lesko adds that there are two other federal sites, FedBizOpps.gov and USAspending.gov, that offer similar but more limited contract information.

“President Obama helped launch them as a senator, and they offer some stimulus data,” notes Lesko, in his trademark question-mark suit. “The problem with them is that they are limited to federal contracts, and USAspending.gov seems to have a time lag problem and the information isn’t that new. For anyone wanting a piece of the stimulus package, the name of the game is being first in line, and that means knowing when and where the money is being appropriated.” For even more up to date news, analysis and expert advice on landing government contracts visit: www.myamericanbenefits.com
Media contact: ABNewsAlert@aol.com Deb Samson 800-261-6147