A General Accountability Office (GAO) report on the Recovery Act released today says Recovery.gov has, “a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed.”

The report recommends the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should, “work with federal agencies to increase recipients’ understanding of the reporting requirements and guidance.” According to GAO, the staff at OMB generally agrees with the recommendations.

Specific errors meriting further review according to the report include:

• 3,978 reports that showed no dollar amount received or expended but included more than 50,000 jobs created or retained
• 9,247 reports that showed no jobs but included expended amounts approaching $1 billion
• Instances of other reporting anomalies such as discrepancies between award amounts and the amounts reported as received which, although relatively small in number, indicate problematic issues in the reporting

GAO also cited inconsistent jobs reporting on Recovery.gov, “even though significant guidance and training was provided by OMB and federal agencies.”

According to OMB guidance, jobs created or retained were to be expressed as FTEs (full-time equivalents), but various agencies used different interpretations of what an FTE actually is, thus compromising the ability to aggregate the data. For example, one higher education system in California used a two-month period as the basis for an FTE while another used a year as the basis for an FTE.

GAO recommends OMB take the following steps to improve FTE reporting:

• Clarify and standardize the definition period of measurement for FTEs across agencies.
• Be more explicit that “jobs created or retained” be reported as hours worked and paid for with Recovery Act funds.
• Work with federal agencies to provide or improve guidance to recipients about full- time equivalent calculation.

The GAO report also says reported jobs calculated on Recovery.gov do not reflect the total effect on employment, partly because less than one third of the stimulus had been expended by Sept. 30.

The report also seems to support a common free-market theme. “The Recovery Act includes entitlements and tax provisions, which also have employment effects. The employment effects in any state will vary with labor market stress and fiscal condition, as discussed in this report.”

Page 45 of the full report cites tax credits and tax cuts, among other payments to individuals and businesses, as “jobs multipliers.”

Download a PDF of the report hilights here.

The full 74-page report is here.