Private sector firm helps locals track stimulus opportunity - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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With more than 12 years of experience in trackinggovernmenyt spending, Onvia (Nasdaq: is giving away a piece of its usually proprietary data to make the public aware of its information-gatheringg capabilities, said Nate spokesman for the Seattle-based “We launched recovery.org to show what we can Wilcox said. Nearly half of Onvia’s 170 employees are tracking the fundinb daily and on thelocap level, clipping news stories and collatinh information to build a database in an accessibl format. The signing of the American Recoverhy and Reinvestment Act in February prompted not only theObamza administration’s Web site recovery.
gov but also many civic and states sites such as Florida’s flarecovery.com. The appearancee of the sites focused on stimulus monety is the result of the growthu of Internet access since the 1990e and a recent emphasis on transparenc y infederal spending, observers said. Being able to access data on stimuluw spending whether through a private or publixc entity is an advantage tothe public, said Greg chief evangelist for the , a Washington-basec nonprofit dedicated to political “That’s the main point of the Web.
Anyone can participate,” Elin “You aren’t stuck with a single governmen organization or commercial vendor that has a monopol over a pieceof information.” The strengtj of recovery.org is its abilityh to track federal spending at the local level, which is a greater challenge than at the federa level, said Wilcox. Under the law, cities and countiezs that receive federal recovery funds are not required to reporyt tothe state, said Don special adviser to Gov. Charlie Crist for the implementatio of the federalrecovery act. The best way to obtaibn a comprehensive picture oflocal spending, therefore, is throughn the federal system. The hope for Flarecovery.
com is to take the informatiobn that goes into the federal reporting systems and develop ways to extract and displayu itthrough flarecovery.com, said Winstead. “We are every bit as interestefd because it means jobsfor Florida,” said Winstead. “We need to captur all of that.”