U.S. publicizes names of federal subcontractors

[ProSense]

Source: Washington Post

The U.S. government is giving the public new details about how it is spending taxpayer money on government business.

Starting Wednesday, the Obama administration began publicizing the names of subcontractors - the companies that get the majority of federal contracts - along with the dollar amounts they receive.

For years, the government reported only the companies that won major, or prime, government contracts - even if those companies then hired subcontractors to do most of the job. Now taxpayers can follow more accurately where their dollars are going, tracing public money to the specific companies and communities that share in multimillion- and billion-dollar federal work.

The previous dearth of information about government subcontracts led to incomplete and sometimes misleading conclusions about Uncle Sam's impact on communities.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106776.html

[AngryAmish]

1. This is good

It is also gonna create problems for the intelligence community.

[Solly Mack]

2. k/r

[XemaSab]

3. Very cool

Interesting to see how many dollars have flowed to companies I've worked for. :D

[Poll_Blind]

4. Great link! K&R.

I had some problems with this loading correctly earlier but it seems to be populated with data now.

PB

[GoCubsGo]

5. Good!

But, I'm betting we'll hear crickets from the "The Private Sector can do things better and cheaper" types. Seems they have been doing it, but not better, and definitely not cheaper, which some of us have already known for decades.

[Recursion]

6. Outstanding

I worked for a small business in DC that did most of its work as pass-through's for other companies; we officially got the contract but then another company would do the work. We were a minority-owned (8A) company which gave us some bidding advantages, but what would happen was some big company would find an RFP they liked, "shop" for an 8A to be the prime, and get us to bid on it for them.

This company at least did things (video production and web design -- a neat bit of trivia is that more hours of film are produced in DC every year than in Hollywood); there were 8A's out there that literally just serviced contracts for other companies, which seems like a perversion of the intent of the 8A rules. Hopefully some sunlight will disinfect this kind of thing.

[MineralMan]

7. Responsible transparency is a very good thing.

This will be very interesting to explore. Thanks, Mr. President!

[KoKo]

8. Became Law in 2006...Information's Release is two years behind schedule...

This is a good thing...but it's been in the works since 2006.


From the article:

The subcontractors' names are being made public as required by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which became law in 2006 under President George W. Bush. The informations' release is two years behind schedule. A smaller portion of subcontractor information - for contracts larger than $20 million - was made public in October.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations faulted technical obstacles for preventing accurate reporting and Web site publication of subcontractor information. After the Obama administration spent tens of millions of dollars in 2009 to create a public Web site, FederalReporting.gov, to track money spent on stimulus projects - including subcontractor details - it cleared the way for the same information to be published on standard government contracts.