This example does, BTW, amplify the point already discussed in this thread about Primes vs Subs. The Stimulus Watch page reports only Primes (and actually, just 4 of 5 of them), summing to $1.2 million. But there are 25 Keene-related awards summing to $10.9 million.

ARRA’s default data model doesn’t deliver that wider view, but we can — I would argue must — augment it so we can expose and annotate more of what’s going on.

http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/performance_places/city/NH/03431/keene

The award number alone is not ideal, but it’s what we’ve got and what we are likely to have in the foreseeable future.

Given that reality, the award number can be augmented with other clues — either from within the Arra data or from outside it — to create views of the data that give more traction.

You need a key pair of AwardID and OrderID to specifically identify the Subs.

Unless OrderID is missing, as is true for the COPS example discussed in #14 above.

But in any case, if that kind of key pair is a requirement, few will be able to meet it, and little or no collective annotation will emerge.

From a pure information management perspective, you want to uniquely identify records with key pairs.

But from a social information management perspective, you want to keep the activation threshold really low, so that it’s quick and easy for people to associate things with other things.

Sure. In this case, there are a couple of ways to isolate the 7 COPS awards for NH.

1. The titles match: “The COPS Hiring Recovery Program (CHRP) provides funding directly to law enforcement agencies…”

2. The award numbers share a common pattern:

2009RKWX0612
2009RKWX0609
2009RKWX0613
2009RKWX0617
2009RKWX0608
2009RKWX0614
2009RKWX0616

If these correspondences hold across all 50 spreadsheets, then there’s an easy algorithmic way to tag all COPS entries with TAS_15-0412 and link them to other things so tagged.

Ideally the tagging would be done at the source. But there’s no need to wait for that to happen. If it’s useful and important, it can be done in a view overlaid onto the source.

For example, the treasury account symbol (TAS) has been of particular interest to me. In one of the grants to Keene, NH (2009RKWX0608) is part of the Community Oriented Policing Services super-program of the Recovery Act:

COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING SERVICES
For an additional amount for ‘‘Community Oriented Policing
Services’’, for grants under section 1701 of title I of the 1968
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (42 U.S.C. 3796dd)
for hiring and rehiring of additional career law enforcement officers
under part Q of such title, notwithstanding subsection (i) of such
section, $1,000,000,000.

(See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1&version=enr&nid=t0:enr:237 )

All the grants/contracts tied to Community Oriented Policing (COPS) are tied to a TAS of 15-0412 (15 is the Treasury symbol for the Department of Justice)

Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to find all the programs funded under COPS (TAS = 15-0412) across the country to see what the $1 billion appropriate for this purpose is doing? And, of course, COPS is just one of many different programs funded under ARRA….

Agencies also have their own systems for creating the AwardID number so there are some inconsistencies.

Thanks Robert, that helps a bit. In the case of the example I searched for…

http://elmcity.info/doublesearch/?q=S394A090030

…the Prime Recipient is:

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

And the description is:

The purpose of this grant is to support and restore funding for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education and, as applicable, early child hood education programs and services in States and local educational agencies

That description covers, for the whole state, 161 awards totaling $192,121,666.

There’s obviously more to the story. But when I search for the identifier S394A090030
all that comes back is the page I referenced before at recovery.gov. And also, now, some links to this blog.

My point, again: S394A090030 is a webscale identifier that thousands of people involved in hundreds of funded projects could be using to tell much more of the story. I think a lot of them would like to write and tell it, and a lot of us would like to read and hear it.

I don’t expect the ARRA spreadsheet alone to tell the story. It can’t possibly. But it could be a table of contents for a book of stories written by many people.

You can type in the Award ID into either Google or the Recipient Search scope and the Award Summary page result surfaces all of the Recipient reported info into a single page.

To find the Prime description use the same Award Key as the Sub.

Thanks for the App (h/t Micah Sifry).

I’m working on a project in Philadelphia, http://trackingchange.pbworks.com/ARRA-Advocacy-and-Outreach-Initiative, to connect minority-owned businesses with stimulus opportunities. The award descriptions will help them better identify projects to pursue.

Faye