Recovery board unveils makeover of stimulus spending Web site

Government-appointed watchdogs debuted on Monday the much-anticipated overhaul of Recovery.gov, featuring sophisticated pictorial representations of spending data, advanced search functions, multimedia tutorials and some downloads. The upgrade does not include new stimulus results, such as jobs statistics, which will be funneled into the site later in October. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board intends the site to be a window into the Obama administration's economic recovery effort and has the expectation that the public -- concerned citizens, academia, journalists, agencies, states, recipients, Congress and special interest groups -- will visit the site to learn more about how the $787 billion in stimulus funds are being spent. The site represents 10 weeks of work by a team of vendors that were awarded a potential $18 million contract on July 8. Stimulus contracts granted by federal agencies will not appear until Oct. 15, and information reported by the private sector and states will not be posted until Oct. 30. But board officials said they wanted the public to learn and test out the new features before then.