It has been a whirlwind 8 days since Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced a bill to reform federal spending transparency. On June 13, Issa introduced the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), held a hearing the next day, and will mark up the bill tomorrow in his Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Here's a little news tidbit from the Recovery Board: in his latest "Chairman's Corner" post, Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney disclosed that the website Recovery.gov has thus far cost $6.8 million. This is out of a $9.5 million contract with Smartronix, a Maryland IT company, meaning that the Board has about another $2.7 million left in its contract. After that, the Board has the option of extending the contract through 2014, for about another $9 million. Now, $6.8 million isn't exactly cheap, but for creating a website to show a brand new type of reporting in an extremely compressed time frame, it's not too bad.

Just a friendly reminder that on January 1, the clock began on the second Recovery Act recipient reporting cycle. Prime and sub recipients have from January 1 to January 15 to submit their reports to FederalReporting.gov, recipients will edit these reports from then until January 22, and agencies will then have until January 29 to review the reports. Everything will be published on Recovery.gov on Saturday, January 30.

Sean noted earlier today that the Obama Administration released the Open Government Directive this morning. It will have far-reaching implications for government transparency generally, but the directive focuses on federal spending transparency, specifically mentioning Recovery Act transparency as a critical venue for federal government openess.