The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board faced a daunting task after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted in February 2009.  In a fraction of the usual time, the board had to stand up two large-scale Web sites coordinating input from 28 agencies to track $787 billion in stimulus funds.  Failure was not an option.  The largest federal economic plan since the Great Depression hung in the balance.  The project was described as “extremely high risk – fraught with numerous challenges, any one of which could torpedo the entire venture.”  It took fast and effective collaboration among federal agencies, companies and nonprofits to make this unprecedented reporting project work.

During a CGI Initiative webinar on Thursday, November 18, Michael Wood, Recovery.gov Director, and Andrew McLauchlin, Executive Director of the CGI Initiative, discussed insights and lessons learned from the successful stand-up of the Recovery Act Web sites.  This Executive Guide provides key takeaways from the webinar and additional on-line resources.

If you missed this webinar, you can view a full replay here. We will soon post a full replay on our website as well.

‘Our Big Enemy Was Time’

The Recovery Board team came together in May 2009, Mr. Wood said, and about four months later, it had two Web sites built and fielded. FederalReporting.gov was open for stimulus recipients to register in August 2009 and Recovery.gov was up on September 29, 2009. The Recovery Act created several novel requirements for the sites. For example, it gave 13 inspectors general the job of building them, an unusual choice, Mr. Wood said, but one that ended up ensuring that the Web site procurements were done entirely by the book. In addition, the site builders had to embark on the project with no idea how many entities would receive Recovery Act funds or how many reports they would file.

“Our big enemy was time,” Mr. Wood said. “For a normal federal procurement, six months is very, very quick, but that was our definition of failure.”

Mr. Wood said the Board set a group of simple and clear goals at the outset that helped overcome the pressures of a tight deadline and a high public profile:

- Establish a site to serve as the government’s official  web portal for Recovery

- Collect data from the government on plans, activities, and distribution of funds

- Collect data from Recovery fund recipients including projects, jobs, etc.

- Portray information for the American public on the web site in a user friendly manner

Keys to Success:

An early decision to split the project in two proved essential, Mr. Wood said. His group divided into two teams, one to build the system for collecting data from stimulus funding recipients, the other to build the system to portray the data. Mr. Wood identified several other keys to the successful development and launch of the Recovery Act websites:

- Executive and board support: Because it was a high-profile project at the heart of a huge stimulus effort to kick-start the U.S. economy, the stand-up of the Recovery Act Web sites had the attention and support of the board, the Office of the Vice President, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and legislators. This meant top officials were easily and quickly accessible to make important decisions, Mr. Wood said.

- High-performing staff: Mr. Wood characterized the Web sites team as “very, very highly qualified good technical people who could program and do project management” from across the government. “They knew what they were doing,” Mr. Wood added. Hence, they could work closely with contractors day to day. Mr. Wood likened the effort to a Silicon Valley start-up—working 24-7.

- Best-in-class contracts: For FederalReporting.gov, the team looked for an existing federal system and found one in the Web-based data collection system at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The board bought into the existing contract quickly through an interagency agreement. For Recovery.gov, the board drew contracting expertise from the General Services Administration (GSA) and put together a very good procurement package that required little change before being opened for bids, Mr. Wood explained.

- Clear objectives: The teams limited their requirements for both systems and employed critical path project management, so nothing was permitted to halt development of the two sites. The teams also set up a lightweight change management process so any major requests could be answered in hours. They used rapid prototyping and developed in parallel tracks, always planning alternate approaches in case the ones they chose failed and maintaining backup sites.

- Crowdsourcing: The board ran an online dialogue and focus groups to solicit outside expertise and public comments on best ways to portray the data. Thousands of people, companies and organizations received Recovery Act funds. Because some of them never had dealt with online forms, the board set up a robust help desk and held town hall meetings with stakeholders across the country.

- Existing technologies and platforms: “We used tried and true technology. We didn’t use a lot of visualization techniques that were new,” Mr. Wood said. “There wasn’t a lot of time for very specific programming except for some customization for incoming recipient reports.”

- Collaboration and cooperation between the government and contractors:  “Everybody was pushing toward the same goal,” Mr. Wood said. “We basically gave the technical people some latitude and they went out and did it.”

Key Practical Takeaways:

The Recovery Act reporting approach is likely to be used to capture spending data and mash it up with program data in the future, according to Mr. Wood. As agencies prepare for that and undertake similar reporting and data exposure projects, they can apply takeaways from the Recovery board’s experiences:

- Simplify problems and remove impediments to success

- Select solutions that maximize probability of success under challenging deadlines

- Manage the acquisition process to fit deadlines

- Rely on a high-performing team from across numerous organizations

- Simplify, break down the problem, focus on near-term goals, keep the process moving

Additional Resources:

Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

“On the Road to Accountability and Transparency,” the board’s report about building the Recovery Act Web sites.

Recovery.gov | FederalReporting.gov

FederalTransparency.gov, the recovery Board’s new Web site for reporting on $10 billion in funding for education jobs.

National online Recovery Dialogue on IT Solutions

“U.S. publicizes names of federal subcontractors”

Executive Guide to Making Data Public, Meaningful and Effective (CGI Initiative Webinar)

Collaborative Leadership: The Recovery Act and Beyond (CGI Initiative Webinar)

Data.gov | Apps.gov | USASpending.gov