Recovery Act reporting reaches highest level of disclosure

Nearly 100 percent of all prime recipients of Recovery Act funds filed mandatory spending reports with the government last quarter -- the highest compliance rate since the stimulus was signed into law in February 2009.

In the most recent filing quarter, ending June 30, more than 74,000 prime recipients of Recovery Act contracts, grants and loans were required to report their spending to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Only 352 recipients failed to report their spending, a participation rate of 99.5 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. "This is a pioneering transparency effort and, while there may have been some initial skepticism that it could be pulled off, last quarter nearly 100 percent of recipients required to report did so," OMB Interim Director and Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients wrote in a recent blog post. "This unprecedented level of disclosure has been lauded by government watchdogs and transparency groups as a significant achievement for open government." Nearly 90 percent of the noncompliers last quarter -- a total of 312 -- were first-time offenders, OMB found. In the past, one-time nonfilers have attributed the omissions to technical problems. In the majority of these cases, Zients wrote, the recipient quickly resolved the issues and filed correctly the next quarter.