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.

Our IT goblins have been slaving away in the basement of OMB Watch for months processing loads and loads of government data, and they finally have something to show for it! Our latest update to FedSpending.org includes federal spending on contracts through 2008 with partial data available for FY 2009, and federal assistance spending, such as grants, loans, insurance and direct government payments, up through the first two quarters of 2008. Take a gander and manipulate all the new data by state, year, federal agency, or type of contract or assistance.

Kudos to the Recovery Board for responding so quickly to user complaints that recipient report data on Recovery.gov was spread over some 120 files had parsing issues when opened in a spreadsheet. Since Friday, the Board has added to Recovery.gov's Download Center a single file containing all prime and sub-recipient reports. Not only that, but the file is a Microsoft Excel file, which means that commas appearing in some of the data fields won't confuse your spreadsheet application like the CSV files originally posted.