A notable feature is an interactive map allowing you to identify specific locations where contracts, grants and loans are allocated. Just enter your ZIP code under the U.S. graphic on the home page and a map of your region will show the names of Recovery Act fund recipients in your area. You can even read descriptions of specific projects the funds are intended to support (for example, click here to see a map of projects in the Northwest D.C. area).

Another feature on the home page allows you to search for projects by agency, state, monetary amount and the type of award.

Charts on the site also rank allocations per agency or state/territories.

Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said the Web site intends to empower individuals to monitor projects in their area and report any suspected abuse or waste of funds. A red tab on the top right corner of the home page allows visitors to submit complaints electronically. A fraud hotline, fax number and mailing address are also listed.

“You’ll be our first line of defense against those who would abuse this money,” Devaney said in a video posted on the Web site.

The re-launch is in anticipation of the first quarterly deadline for spending reports from all grants, loans and contracts. Recovery.gov will post all data from federal contracts by Oct.15. Spending data from states and other recipients will be posted by Oct. 30. The quarterly process will be repeated until the entire $787 billion in Recovery funds have been spent, Devaney said in the video.

A timeline of actions taken under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are listed here.

More information on the Act and Recovery.gov can be read here.

Please welcome Social Government’s newest contributor, Patricio Chile. Chile is a freelance writer and Web consultant currently based in Washington. Previously, he held positions at the USC Network Culture Project and at Third Sector Magazine in the United Kingdom. Chile is a 2009 graduate of American University, double majoring in Communication and Political Science.

Powerful job search tools await prospective government applicants at USAJOBS, the Office of Personnel Management’s job portal.

In particular, you can create your own resume using an interactive resume builder at My USAJOBS. The tool guides applicants through every step of the process — and creates a resume containing all the information that federal employers need, in an attractive format.

My USAJOBS also allows users to create custom search agents — which will send the user an e-mail every time the criteria in a particular agent is met.

In the future, the site could certainly get more social. Better graphics and possibly YouTube videos could help explain the complex federal hiring process — something that is done adequately on the current site — but could be improved.

To all those applying: good luck with your job search!

Started in April 2003, the online chats featured everyone from “Turkey Guy” JD Estes to the former president himself. They were held multiple times a month, and sometimes even three or more times in a single week.

While President Obama clearly took the idea to the next level when he held his online town hall at the end of March (and Vice President Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein answered follow-up questions on the White House blog, including one of our very own Nick Troiano), this online town hall idea is too ambitious to be offered on a regular basis.

What was cool about the chats from the Bush White House was that rank and file employees were frequent contributors, giving the public a better understanding of how the White House works.

For a new White House which supposedly embraces technology, it baffles me that the online chats have not returned. The concept is basic, the execution is simple and the transparency potential is unlimited.

To a member of Congress, the congressional Web site may just be another aspect of the responsibilities of their elected office, but to their constituents, having an up-to-date and effective portal may be their most valuable connection to the labyrinth of legislative procedure and executive agencies.

Rep. David Price, D-N.C., author of The Congressional Experience: Transforming American Politics writes of his duties as a member: “I am only one of [many] strong-willed people trying to shape national policy outcomes, but as I often remind constituents…I am the only one of the 435 who is responsible for assisting individuals, organizations, and local governments in the Fourth District in their dealings with the federal government.” The Congressional Web site is where the power of transparency and open government can be fully realized.

The Congressional Management Foundation has outlined “Five Building Blocks of Effective Congressional Web Sites,” Audience, Content, Usability, Interactivity and Innovation. These suggested categories, and the annual Congressional “Gold Mouse Award” given to members who meet them best, are primarily created to enhance and improve a Congressional office’s online communication strategy. At the same time that effective communication with constituents and organizations is important, so too is the ability of a constituent to use the Web site as a tool to see, unfiltered, how their member of Congress is representing them.

According to the Sunlight Network’s “Punch Clock Campaign,” only four United States Senators and four members of the House of Representatives currently post their daily schedules, showing constituents whom they are meeting with, on their official Web sites. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D, was one of the first leaders of this openness when she was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2006. Since she was appointed by New York Governor David Patterson, D, to fill the Senate seat vacated by now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gillibrand has continued a commitment to transparency, in what she calls “The Sunlight Report,” by prominently displaying it on the homepage of her Web site. In addition to providing online access to her financial disclosure forms and earmark requests, Gillibrand has utilized social media to deliver her message of openness, saying in a YouTube video last month, “I think New Yorkers deserve leaders who are honest and up-front with the public. To address are economic challenges, we need greater transparency in government.”

Especially for new members of Congress, faced with comparably small budgets and staff, committing to transparency on their official Web sites can pose a burden. The Washington Examiner reported this week that about half of the 55 members of the House first elected last November still have the basic template-form Web sites they choose from the Office of House Information Resources (HIR). “The member can choose from five design templates, which provide basic information. Some are colorful and eye catching while others are sharp and formal. Representatives also have the choice to contract out for their own independent Web site design, but they have to pay out of their own office budget,” the article says.

The Democratic majorities in Congress have pledged to restore a commitment to openness in the appropriations process. In February, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., sent a letter to members saying that all offices, “must post information on the requests they have submitted to the Appropriations Committee on their official House Web site at the time the request is made.” Lawmakers were to have until April 4 to publish all requests, however, according to The Hill newspaper, over 70 offices did not comply. On Wednesday, it was reported that those members that missed the deadline, or are still not in compliance, will not be punished in any way, raising questions about the Leadership’s commitment to earmark transparency and reform.

As more members of Congress take to Tweeting and hosting their floor speeches or district events on YouTube, and with large and divisive issues including health care and energy expected to be debated in the next several months, the constituent demand for transparency from their members of Congress will only increase. In the weeks ahead, I hope to take a closer look at specific members’ websites and other issues concerning transparency in the legislative branch.

But that’s where the similarity between this site and a White House Web site ends. A superior Web site, FinancialStability.gov has lots of information on it — something that has largely been lacking from the various White House Web sites (especially Recovery.gov).

What’s so good about FinancialStability.gov?

• A local impact section shows transactions funded by Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program. We can even see each individual transaction!
• Searchable contracts and agreements that relate to the Financial Stability Plan.
• An already rich video section!
• A necessary and well-done decoder section.
• Rich, thorough content throughout the Web site.

The folks at Treasury get it. Someone clearly spent a lot of time on this Web site — something that certainly can’t be said about the people at the White House. Their sites get often go live as mere works in progress — something that many people, including me, find frustrating. Hopefully the White House will learn a lesson from the agency right next door.

But isn’t it time their Web site got with the 21st century? The poorly designed site makes it difficult for anyone to find information. You’re also out of luck if you don’t know how the court operates, since many terms are used without explanation.

Forget about Web 2.0 suggestions for the high court. Let’s bring their Web 1.0 presence up to acceptable standards first.

• Lose the splash page. This splash page serves no purpose and is intimidating. Replace it with a homepage containing news and information.
• Don’t bury the information! Court decisions are hard to find on the site. Once you find them, they’re displayed in a poorly organized fashion.
• Buy a content management system. I’m all but certain the court is using Microsoft FrontPage or similar software to maintain their site. If they invested in a CMS, it would be easier for more information to be posted.
• Make Web sites for each of the justices. Each of these highly respected members of the court deserves more than a one-paragraph biography in a PDF file.

These are just a few suggestions. Hopefully this site, which is an embarrassment to our nation’s legal system, will soon be fixed.

OpenCongress is a Web site originally started by The Participatory Politics Foundation three years ago with the help of The Sunlight Foundation. The goal of the Web site is to “help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement.” The website is part THOMAS, part Facebook, part Wikipedia, part Digg and part awesome.

The website pulls in every bill proposed in Congress and tracks various information on it. For instance, it shows who the bill’s sponsor and cosponsors are, what status of the bill is (in the House, in committee, on the President’s desk, etc.), as well as blog and news coverage of each bill. If a bill is really popular and if C-SPAN footage is available, the site also provides footage of Senators and Representatives talking about it. OpenCongress allows members to comment on each bill and to rate each other’s comments based on utility. After a bill is voted on, it also breaks down the votes in charts.

What about the people who vote on those bills? That’s where the Facebook part comes in. OpenCongress has a profile for every single Senator and Representative, which catalogs a whole host of information on them, including voting records and committee memberships. Other tidbits include party loyalty, a popularity index, videos and most interestingly, campaign finance information.

OpenCongress is more than just current bills and members though. Its wiki section outlines information about Congress as an institution. It goes into great depth about Congressional procedures, rules and even Article I of the Constitution. It also has information on every single committee in the House and Senate.

Besides what has already been listed, what makes OpenCongress part awesome? Check out these tools provided by the site. My personal favorite is the Battle Royale, which, to read the description, “stacks up all the bills, issues, and Members of Congress.”

OpenCongress is a great tool. It and sites like it are laying the foundation for a seemless interaction between citizens and their government. It’s not finished yet though, and there are definitely some areas in which the site could improve. For one, it could make itself more accessible to children by providing something like simple.wikipedia. It also has a great opportunity to set an example for what a government-wide social network could look like. All in all, a great site for educating the citizenry.

Here’s the updated list:

While I applaud the Obama Administration for their committment to openness and for using the Web as their main tool of transparency, Recovery.gov has some issues.

First, CNET reported that Recovery.gov initially included a robots.txt file. A robots.txt file blocks so-called bots (including search engine crawlers) from accessing a Web site. While the White House has since removed the bot-blocker, one can’t help but wonder why someone wouldn’t want Google crawling a Web site about transparency in the first place. The White House did not comment on this.

Perhaps most importantly, the Web site only scratches the surface of breaking down the massive package into bits and pieces. While the federal government begins to dole out stimulus money, it seems the Web site is still a work in progress — one can only see two metrics: a state-by-state breakdown of job creation and a very broad estimate of investments made. Yet the bill contains very specific uses for the money — a point that someone would never understand by looking at the fancy yet hardly useful graphics on this Web site.

However, we have yet to see the full potential of this new site. A searchable database of some sort seems to be on the way — as evidenced by strict reporting requirements mandated by the Office of Management and Budget. Hopefully the database will implement a user-friendly design to tackle the hoards of data soon to flow through government computers.

It also seems like individual states have mimicked the concept. Colorado, where Obama signed the stimulus, has created their own economic stimulus Web site. This action is not neccessary (I wonder if we’ll see it in states with Republican governors) but should prove to serve as a nice complement to the main Recovery.gov Web site.

One thing is for certain: despite a bumpy start, if Recovery.gov works as intended, we’ve surely entered a new era of Web-based transparency.

Do they have their Senate Web sites up and running yet?

So the breakdown: six out of 13 Web sites are operational. Of the six, two belong to Republicans and four belong to Democrats. Most, if not all of the active Web sites are generic templates with basic information.

One thing to note: residents of Colorado currently do not due not have a senator with an active Web site — since both of the Centennial State’s Senate seats changed hands this month.