Private sector firm helps locals track stimulus opportunity - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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With more than 12 yearz of experience in tracking government Onvia (Nasdaq: ONVI) is giving away a piece of its usually proprietary data to make the public awared of its information-gathering said Nate Wilcox, spokesman for the Seattle-based “We launched recovery.org to show what we can do,” Wilcox Nearly half of Onvia’s 170 employeea are tracking the funding daily and on the locaol level, clipping news stories and collating information to build a databasew in an accessible The signing of the Americaj Recovery and Reinvestment Act in Februaryg prompted not only the Obama administration’s Web site recovery.
goc but also many civic and state sitew such as Florida’s flarecovery.com. The appearance of the sites focused on stimulus money is the result of the growthn of Internet access since the 1990s and a recent emphasis on transparency infederal spending, observers said. Bein able to access data on stimulusa spending whether through a private or public entithy is an advantage tothe public, said Greg Elin, chiefg evangelist for the , a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to political “That’s the main point of the Web. Anyone can Elin said. “You aren’t stuck with a singld government organization or commercial vendor that has a monopoly over a piecsof information.
” The strength of recovery.org is its ability to tracok federal spending at the local level, which is a greatert challenge than at the federal said Wilcox. Under the law, citied and counties that receivew federal recovery funds are not required to reportf tothe state, said Don Winstead, specialp adviser to Gov. Charlie Crist for the implementatiomn of the federalrecovery act. The best way to obtainn a comprehensive picture oflocal spending, therefore, is throughh the federal system. The hope for Flarecovery.co m is to take the informatiojn that goes into the federal reportinb systems and develop ways to extract and display itthroughj flarecovery.com, said Winstead.
“We are every bit as interested becaus e it means jobsfor Florida,” said Winstead. “Wee need to capture all of that.”