OMB POLICY STATEMENTS
OMB Guidelines Lead To Miscounting Stimulus Job Cuts
Confusion over Office of Management and Budget stimulus reporting guidelines has led to under-counting -- in addition to already reported over-counting -- of jobs saved or created by the Recovery Act, according to an analysis by Government Executive.OMB instructed prime recipients of stimulus funds to provide the public with dozens of data elements on spending, including a brief description of the types of jobs that they and any subcontractors had saved or created. In a separate column, recipients were to enter the total number of jobs saved or created -- a figure that in theory should match the information in the narrative column. But, a closer look at recipient data released on Oct. 30 on Recovery.gov showed that information in the two columns often did not line up. Repeatedly, recipients of grants and contracts discussed jobs created or saved in the narrative column but failed to include them in the total.