Now that is indeed the glimmers of ‘hope and change’. /s
Stimulus jobs claims report full of errors...
Gaffes in federal reports this week about stimulus have called into question the government’s ability to accurately track how many jobs are being created by the massive $787 billion Recovery Act.
The data in Thursday’s reports were filled with mistakes, including an error that made it look like a French vaccine maker received the largest stimulus contract, $1.4 billion, when in fact it has gotten an award one-100th the size.
Government research organization OMB Watch said its assessment of the reports revealed many inconsistencies in the job data.
“The data is rife with mistakes,” said Craig Jennings, senior federal fiscal policy analyst at OMB Watch. “When you put out data that hasn’t yet been checked, it undermines transparency, because you are putting out wrong information.”
…A mistake in the very first contract listed on the site prompted doubts about the reliability of the reports.
Recovery.gov erroneously reported Thursday that French vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur had received $1.4 billion in stimulus funds from the Department of Health and Human Services. The company topped the site’s list titled “Largest federal contracts in U.S.”
When CNNMoney.com first asked about the contract Thursday, a spokeswoman from Sanofi Pasteur suspected the $1.4 billion figure was a mistake. HHS spokeswoman Vicki Rivas-Vazquez said the number on recovery.gov was erroneous and the actual amount was $10.4 million.
Sanofi Pasteur said Friday that $10.4 million is the correct figure.
“We anticipated errors in the reporting and so informed many reporters beforehand,” said Edward Pound, spokesman for the Recovery Board. “This is the first time this kind of reporting is being done. These reports are being reviewed by federal agencies and recipients to catch any errors or problems.”
The Recovery Board has the tall task of compiling all of the data, and is spending $18 million revamping its Web site to manage all of the information.
OMB Watch said its review yielded “really weird job numbers,” including many discrepancies within the reports themselves. For instance, Jennings said OMB Watch found that many companies said in a narrative portion of their reports that it was able to retain several employees because of stimulus funds, but the “jobs created” column read “zero.”
The Recovery Board aggregates its jobs data from the “jobs created” column to display the total number of jobs saved or created. Jennings speculated that recipients might have been confused about the scope of the term “created.”
“I would not stake any sort of claims on those job numbers,” said Jennings. “We don’t know what’s going on there.”