To celebrate the first 100 days of the Recovery Act, the Vice President's office released a report on May 27 called "100 Days, 100 Projects," highlighting 100 projects funded under the Recovery Act. The Administration is calling the report a "snapshot" of how the Recovery Act is affecting people all across the nation. And "snapshot" is the perfect term for this report, since it gives us a quick glimpse into the information the Administration has collected so far, but it leaves us with more questions than answers.

The problem is with details in the report. For each project, it shows who's getting money, how much money, and for what purpose. This level of detail is a little confusing. For a while now, the Administration (through Recovery.gov) has been saying that recipient information is not going to be available until October of this year. So far, the only information available on Recovery.gov are the vague program plans the agencies released last week, which do not list who is getting Recovery Act funds, and often don't even list the amount of money each project is getting.

But, if the Administration doesn't have detailed information on recipients, and won't have it until October, where is this new information coming from? It doesn't help that the Vice President's report is completely devoid of any source information, so we have no idea where it came from. One has to believe that the report is based off of information from the agencies, since it is an "official" government report (although Bill Allison from the Sunlight Foundation is doing a good job of questioning where this information actually came from). If it is official government information, then they clearly already have a great deal of information about Recovery projects from around the country, as this new report shows. Apparently, they know very specific details about at least 100 projects, such as the grant or contract amount, the recipient, and the project involved. So why isn't this information on Recovery.gov? Nor is any of this information found on USAspending.gov, which has started posting detailed information about a few of the early Recovery contracts and grants. The Administration has the information, since they made this document, but they're still saying that it won't be made public until October? It seems absurd. It's like going to the store and asking for a product, and having the manager tell you they won't get it in for another four months, despite the fact that you can see the product behind them in the storeroom.

So which is it? Does the Administration have the data or do they not have the data? It doesn't seem likely that they are waiting for all the information before filing a report, since USAspending.gov is apparently already releasing information on some Recovery contracts (none of which are in the 100 Days report, though). So what's going on? Things like this 100 Days report don't give us a lot of confidence that the Administration is moving as fast as possible to release Recovery Act information as soon as it is available, or even that everyone in the Administration is on the same page. Sadly, this document, which was supposed to be an effort at transparency and accountability, only highlights how much more information we need about the Recovery.

Image by Flickr user pfala. Used under a Creative Commons license.