Web Watch: Recovery.gov

Navigation along the right side of the site makes it easy to find information about individual states and governmental agencies. So if you want to see how, say, the Department of Education is spending its stimulus money, you just need to click through to its site. The same is true for individual state spending, with easy access to state recovery sites. These sites rarely have the same clean design of Recovery.gov, but mandating that each state and federal agency creates its own recovery page serves an important dual purpose: It encourages accountability from each department and state, while simultaneously building a culture of cooperation. In other words, each state or each department is part of a larger single effort. Recovery.gov seems to take this “e pluribus unum” concept seriously.