A short 27 days after announcing the RFP, yesterday the GSA awarded the Recovery.gov redesign contract to Smartronix, a Maryland firm. Smartronix was one of only three companies to submit bids, out of the 59 companies allowed to bid under the GSA's Alliant acquisition contract. The award is an exciting development, since the current iteration of Recovery.gov (built from a contract with REI Systems) is not very useful in tracking Recovery Act funds, so we're looking forward to a new and improved site. However, the project hasn't gotten off to a promising start.

The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR), of which OMB Watch is a co-chair, just released its analysis of OMB's recent guidance on recipient reporting under the Recovery Act. OMB's guidance only covers recipients of grants and loans (a separate guidance for federal contractors is coming soon), but it starts to flesh out the details of the reporting process, which up until this point have largely been vague and unformed.

Yesterday (June 22) OMB released a new guidance memo detailing recipient reporting under the Recovery Act.  The guidance also consists of two useful supplements, one on the programs subject to the reporting requirements, and another on the recipient reporting model.  We've been waiting for this guidance for a while now, and we'll have a more thorough analysis of it up later. 

Despite Obama's recent push to accelerate Recovery spending from the federal level, it's important to remember that much of the Recovery is going to be driven by the states. A lot of the first wave of spending is dependent on states simply requesting their allotted Recovery funds.