As we wait for tomorrow's recipient reports to be published, some news articles are starting to leak out state by state. For those looking to get a sneak peak of what's happening in their state, many of the state agencies in charge of collecting recipient information at the state and local level have given previews to local papers. For instance, on Monday, the Minnesota Management and Budget Office released preliminary aggregate totals for Recovery Act information in that state.

The Recovery Board itself, though, which is charged with publishing the recipient reports, is keeping mum and sticking to the Oct. 15 publishing date, so finding national level statistics is difficult. In an early morning press release, however, the Recovery Board released one tiny piece of useful information. According to the Board, so far, over 112,000 recipients have submitted data reports to FederalReporting.gov, the reporting site which feeds Recovery.gov. The number, which includes prime recipients, their sub-recipients, and associated vendors, is a potent reminder of just how massive the reporting system, and government in general, truly is. In the eight months since the Recovery Act passed, the federal, state, and local agencies have managed to not only award tens of thousands of contracts, loans, and grants, but they've also managed to educate 112,000 recipient organizations on how to report using the Recovery Act reporting system.

That said, of the 112,000 registered recipients, only 9,000 are contract recipients, and are going to show up on Oct. 15. That's why we are not convinced the Oct. 15 publishing date is going to be all that informative. With the other 92 percent of recipients reporting on Oct. 30, when the Recovery Board posts grant and loan information, tomorrow will be like a small preview for the real show coming at the end of the month.

Image by Flickr user National Library NZ on the Commons used under a Creative Commons license.