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.

We're still going through the recipient reports the Recovery Board released today, but here's one early reaction: the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR), of which OMB Watch is a co-chair, released a statement on the recipient reports. Gary Bass, OMB Watch's executive director, summed up our feelings rather well.

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. 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.

...(mostly) the same as the old Recovery.gov.

The new Recovery.gov went online this morning, and it is...less than revolutionary. I've spent the morning poking around it and checking out the new features. Even though the really important stuff -- the recipient data -- will not be available until Oct. 15, I was hoping that the new site would significantly change the way Recovery watchers would be able to access Recovery spending data. This version, however, is not that site.