Updated Mar. 3, 2010

This database combines records from the recipient-reported data on Recovery.gov and Recovery Act grants and loans reported by agencies on Usaspending.gov. In cases where we found the same record reported in both data sets, we removed the duplicates. Updated data from Recovery.gov data was released Feb. 11 and includes recipient-reported data through Dec. 31. The recovery data from USAspending.gov also includes some grants and loans from January 2010.

We filled in missing information and corrected data entry errors when we found them and could verify the information.

Our Recovery Tracker 3.0 (an update of our latest recovery tracker released in December) contains information on nearly $319 billion in stimulus contracts, grants and loans. Of that, we traced nearly $290 billion to the county level. This database includes information on $4.3 billion going to U.S. territories.

In addition to our features that allow you to get a list of recipients for your area and to get summary data for your state and county, we’ve included some new features:

• Search by federal agency.

• Get a total amount of money awarded under the Cash for Clunkers program in your state and county.

You also can track companies by DUNS number to see what grants, loans or contracts they received. A DUNS number is a unique nine-digit number used to identify a company or an organization. The numbers are issued by Dun & Bradstreet, which provides business information for credit and marketing. (Some companies have multiple DUNS numbers for different locations, so you won’t be able to track every branch of a company.)

Are big chunks of money still going to counties where state agencies are located

We made some adjustments to the data this time to try to provide details at the local level and to correct for some problems we found in the data.

Our previous methodology showed big chunks of funds going to state capital counties. This time, because more money has been awarded to local cities, school districts and organizations, we’ve included sub-recipients in our funding tallies.

How was the county assigned?

Data from Recovery.gov did not include county information. Using other databases, we added it by matching the ZIP code for where the funded project was based. In cases where funding was for statewide projects or multicounty projects, we indicated that in the data. Not all funding was traceable to the county level; for example, Medicaid figures are reported only at the state level.

What other changes did we make to the data?

We tweaked the data in a few places to correct for errors that we found.

We found more than 300 cases where the total amount awarded to all sub-recipients added up to more than the total award amount. In cases where there is one sub-recipient, we adjusted the amount to the amount listed for the prime recipient. We identified other cases where there was a duplicate record for a sub-recipient. In those cases, we’ve backed out the amount for the duplicate sub-recipient record. We found nearly 200 records where the total amount of funds going to sub-recipients exceeded the amount of the award – sometimes by more than $1 million. We had no way to systematically correct these problems. In those cases, we’ve set the adjusted prime amount to zero and added information to indicate that we found a problem. We contacted a few recipients to explore this problem further. The New Jersey Department of Education told us that its total award had increased and was not reflected in the data on recovery.gov.

We found 340 cases where the awards contained no report by the prime recipient. According to folks at the Recovery Board, every award should have a prime recipient. These cases mean that the prime recipient did not report, so we’re created a “dummy” prime recipient record to let you know that is the case.

We found a few hundred cases where a DUNS number was listed for a sub-recipient, but there was no sub-recipient name provided. We looked those up and filled in the recipient name. The data still contains about 1,300 vendor DUNS numbers that have no recipient name. We’ll try to work our way through those and update them in the future.

For more information check the Recovery.gov data User’s Guide (PDF) or check out our recovery data FAQ.

Staff writers Michael Grabell and Joe Kokenge and researcher Kitty Bennett contributed research to this report.