CNE develops platform to examine post-hurricane economic growth
Two years after Hurricane María battered Puerto Rico, local think tank Center for a New Economy has developed an innovative digital platform to help examine Puerto Rico’s economic growth after the storm.
The new Federal Post-María Contracting Monitoring Dashboard gives reporters, academics, organizations, and individuals the ability to easily access all available data relating to federal contracting during the post-disaster reconstruction.
After extensive research on contracting trends, CNE published a report last year revealing an alarming disparity between the amount of federal reconstruction contracts granted to local firms and those based in the US mainland: firms in the states received 90% of all federal contract funds, while those in Puerto Rico only won 10%.
This finding led CNE’s research department to conduct a deeper analysis to understand the reasons for this trend.
The open-access dashboard is the result of CNE’s exhaustive investigation. Its interface can be used to determine which companies have received federal contracts and when, how much money they have received, and what kind of work they’re doing (among many other factors), granting users a deeper understanding of the forces shaping Puerto Rico’s reconstruction process.
The dashboard is highly interactive and will be constantly updated to reflect the most recent available information, the CNE said.
The platform will be available to interested users starting Oct. 9 as a page on CNE’s website. CNE research experts will host a training for local investigative reporters that day, and a video tutorial will be made available on the website immediately after the training.
By developing the Federal Post-María Contracting Monitoring Dashboard, CNE seeks to empower all entities and individuals concerned with Puerto Rico’s reconstruction to learn more about the impact of federal funds on the island’s recovery process.
