Ever since the Recovery Act passed back in February, we've been encouraging the Recovery Board, which operates Recovery.gov, to make its data as open and accessible as possible. The idea is that, the government could set up the greatest recipient reporting system in the world, but if that data is then locked into a proprietary system that is closed to the public, it's really no good. Unfortunately, so far, the Board has not made the recipient data itself readily available, but it has provided a KML file for the data feeding into its mapping applications. This file is a decent start, and the smart folks over at Sunlight Labs have taken advantage of it to create their first Recovery Act-focused application.

The contracting boondoggle that is the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq came into full focus last week with the State Department's release of an Inspector General's audit of the compound. We already knew that construction of the fortress-like embassy, which is the largest on the planet and ten times bigger than any other US embassy, was riddled with the big WF&B (waste, fraud and abuse), but the sheer scale of corruption and ineptitude detailed in the report brings back into question the State Department's ability to oversee contractors.

Several stories this week from Capitol Hill are painting a bleak picture for the appropriations process this year. Just weeks ago, legislators thought that the process would only take until November, tops. Now it seems they'll be lucky to be done by the end of the year, and hopefully won't have to cram everything into an omnibus bill.