Input CEO: First 100 Days Of Stimulus Disappointing

The top executive at Input, the public sector market intelligence firm, told an audience at XChange Government Integrator Friday that in the months following the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), three key goals outlined by the federal government had yet to pass muster.

"The stimulus bill, for government contractors at least, is like winning that contest when you have a shopping cart and have two minutes to fill it with whatever you can," said Timothy Dowd, Input's president and CEO. "Agencies have all this money to spend and a very short time to spend it. They can't mess it up."

Dowd presented research from Input that suggested there's about $60 billion in federal stimulus funds addressable by technology contractors, and that included everything from facilities modernization to R&D and training, Dowd said.

Dowd reminded XGI attendees that thanks to both the stimulus and emergency relief programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it was a "double budget" year for many public-sector agencies. One of the hardest parts, he said, was meeting the government's transparency guidelines for stimulus funds, and appeasing the "numerous oversight bodies" put in place by the Obama administration to manage where those funds were being spent.

"The lion's share of the money will be spent in the next 18 months," Dowd said. "I think what we're seeing right now is the low-hanging-fruit spending. The speed of the spending is tough to get a handle on. It's easy to spend money, but it's not so easy to use money efficiently."

According to Dowd, about $47.6 billion in stimulus funds had been spent as of May 22, a run-rate that would bring spending north of $307.7 billion by Sept. 30, 2010. Dowd was not bullish on the government meeting its goals for stimulus so far, however, expressing disappointment over Input's 100 Day Report Card for ARRA, which examined stimulus goals in several major categories.

In one goal, job creation, Input gave the government's progress on ARRA a grade of "incomplete."

"Since the passage of ARRA, unemployment has actually climbed from 8.1 percent to 9.4 percent," Dowd said. "The Council of Economic Advisers [which is required to report to Congress on ARRA-related job creation every quarter] has a rule for calculating job creation, and that's $92,000 of government spending equals one job created. While convenient in its simplicity, it's quite flawed when applied to calculating jobs either created or preserved by the stimulus. There's no easy metric. It's awfully hard to determine a 'saved job,' for example."

In transparency and reporting, Dowd said, Input gave the government a grade of "D."

"The execution is lacking," Dowd declared. "There's so much confusion, and it's going to hurt the progress of the bill if it doesn't get improved."

In the last grading category Dowd presented, Input gave a grade of "C-minus" to the government on "contracting effectiveness."

"We wish there was broader participation, and more contracts being awarded to small business," Dowd said. "Overall, remember this: The decision to get into the federal contracting business should not be driven by stimulus. You should get into it because you want to get into it, not because you think you might have a chance at some stimulus money right now."