Federal Stimulus/Recovery

By Tom Driscoll, OIT

On March 6 th , Governor Baldacci unveiled the State's recovery website dedicated to federal economic recovery efforts under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) .

The website, located at http://www.maine.gov/recovery and developed in partnership with InforME, will ultimately serve two major roles in helping the State demonstrate governmental transparency in its administration of resources made available under the ARRA. The first role is that of helping the State meet Federal reporting requirements in the law. The second role is to provide the means by which we can create a presentation for the Citizen's of Maine to demonstrate how these investments benefit them in real terms.

At present the site is just a static outline. It includes a few graphs displaying allocation of funding at the national and State levels in several categories of the Act; information about state programs that will receive funding through the federal stimulus law; additional resources for the public regarding stimulus allocation and expenditures; and easy access to agency-specific stimulus Web pages and current stimulus data. Site visitors eventually will be able to view dynamic information about any project funded by stimulus funds, including total dollars allocated and spent, location, percent complete, and contract and payment details. Users will be able to search by category, agency, and other criteria, and will be able to export resulting data into various report formats.

The charge for the Office of Information Technology is to actually create the process that will enable a continuous flow of data to http://www.maine.gov/recovery to provide for the promised transparency in the use of the stimulus/recovery funds.

“This Web site brings accountability and information to the public in an unprecedented fashion for the State of Maine ,” said Richard Thompson, Maine 's Chief Information Officer. “The site is only the beginning of this effort. Information will be updated frequently and more detailed data will be available on the site soon. Online services of this nature deliver on the State's commitment to using the Web to deliver information more efficiently, while having a significant public impact and making government more accessible.”

Article posted on: March 17, 2009
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