“President Obama’s demands for transparency and accountability are echoing in the halls of state and local governments, where elected officials and bureaucrats are scrambling to provide spending data to the federal website Recovery.gov.

A few states are already rising to the challenge. Both Texas and Missouri implemented online models and found the fiscal tracking to be a boon. The Missouri Accountability Portal features data stretching back to 2000, including the salary of each state employee, as well as business tax credits.

In all of these scenarios, decision makers did more than simply crunch data. They put the data in context. Such was the case with an investigation into $15,482.57 of purchases at a Missouri bra shop. Far from being the scandal it may have seemed, the purchase outfitted the state’s female prison inmates.” — UTNE Reader [thanks, trish]