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Stimulus info dump

On October 10 (yes, that was a Saturday) states had to report to the federal government about how they’ve spent their federal stimulus money. And reporters across the land said, “Hey, that report sounds useful, send it to us.”

Yeah, more on that “useful” idea in a moment.

That data is due to roll out on Recovery.gov Thursday, Oct. 15 as an updated omnibus accounting of how stimulus funds have been spent so far. Background on that here and here. Here's hoping the data makes a little more sense when aggregated by the feds.

Unfortunately for those of us trying to understand this material at the state level, North Carolina's “report” wasn’t so much a single document as a series of documents that detail spending in a number of different ways. I’m still plowing through trying to figure out what they actually say. But why keep all the fun to myself.

I’m posting most of the files that I received – as long as they are discrete PDFs or other documents. If you're inclinded, take a look and tell me what you see. What questions would you be asking about all this.

First up, here’s the outline of the initial bits of information from Cathy Akroyd with the N.C. Office of Economic Recovery and Investment. Regarding N. C. Agency Reports.

That document suggests that the 24,442 jobs have been created or saved by the stimulus spending piped through North Carolina agencies thus far. (The number is higher if you take into stimulus spending writ large across North Carolina.)

Here are the documents from that first e-mail.

This is a spreadsheet that is supposed to show how many jobs have been created per agency. Job Impact Spreadsheet

The remainder of the information came grouped by the department from which it was spent. Mostly, it is a set of PDFs that look like they were generated by the database interface from hell. I’ll let you tell me if you think there’s useful information in here.

The first agency up is the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety.

Commerce department:

Commission on Volunteerism & Community Service