Recovery.gov - 10 Hot Sites for Government Transparency

For the very first time without a lawsuit or court order, the federal government is opening up its front and back doors for the public to see how federal funds are being spent in real time. Recovery.gov is helping President Obama to make good on his transparency promise with a new site that tracks every stimulus dollar in every state and ZIP code.

While it has experienced a few growing pains, the site's capabilities are giving anyone who wants to look a chance to see deeply into the government's spending operations. Make no mistake about it, it is no easy task to track the $787 billion in stimulus money. But the information has started to flow this month in great detail.

Recovery.gov also includes a great interactive map allowing users to tailor a request for what they want to see. The map provides raw data, as well as information broken down in many different ways to track money by contracts, grants or loans. It's updated twice a month.

A corollary site--Recovery.org--an independent site that has been around for a decade that helps companies that want to do business with the government. While this site provides information about all government spending data, it also posts early notices of projects, RFOs, and contract award information about contractor and subcontractor recipients of Recovery funds.