More than a year ago, I founded Tracking Change Wiki to track the impact of stimulus spending on reducing black unemployment and increasing opportunities for minority business enterprises. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has transparency and accountability requirements, but states are not required to track demographic data on jobs and contracts awarded.
The Kirwan Institute reports:
Indeed, let the sunshine in.One of the greatest challenges in understanding the impact of the Recovery act has been finding adequate and accurate data on its impact for high need areas. As important as targeted efforts may be, we will never know their impact without more effective data collection. Tracking the expenditure impact of investments and programs by race, gender, and geography is necessary for two reasons. First, tracking these data is necessary to comply with applicable civil rights laws. Second, because the current economic crisis disparately impacts marginalized communities, tracking these data ensures accountability in targeting job creation and retention by those who have been most impacted by the crisis. The jobs bill should require that all recipients of federal awards, tax credits or grants report employee‐level data on who was hired, and subcontractors must also report this information.
