If you’re a little over-caffeinated and feeling ambitious, take a run at FedSpending.org and let us know what you find.
The site was launched about a year ago by OMB Watch, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving government transparency and accountability. We’re all for that.
They updated the site about a week ago and it’s pretty solid. It’s got federal contract information through the second quarter of fiscal year 2007, along with federal grant information through fiscal 2006. You can search it every which way, by state, name of contractor, congressional district, contracting agency and more.
We figure this thing could be fun for cross checking federal campaign contribution records, among other things.
We took a look at federal contracts actually performed in Tampa Bay’s six congressional districts during fiscal 2006. With an Air Force base and a handful of pretty big defense contractors in the area, no names really jumped out at us. But, as we said, you need to be pretty well locked in before going at this thing. The best nuggets undoubtedly are buried deep in the data.
The Fed paid out $781.2-million for contracts actually performed here in fiscal 06. The 10th and 11th congressional districts, represented by C.W. Bill Young and Jim Davis, were the big winners with $351.2-million and $324.9-million respectively.
That’s not a whole lot of money by federal standards, which in itself is disturbing given our national debt. But what did stand out, to us anyway, was that just $81.9-million, or about 10 percent, of that money was awarded as a result of full and open competition. Numbers like that tell us there’s a lot more to learn here.